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Port to Listening Post 



HUGH T. KERR 

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ASSOCIATION PRESS 

Nbw York: 347 Madison Avenub 
1918 



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Copyright, 1918, by 

The International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



NOV 20 1918 



©CU506642 



To My Friend 
JAMES H. LOCKHART 

uy Tis human fortune's happiest height to be 

A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole; 
Second in order of felicity 
I hold it, to have walked with such a soul." 



FOREWORD 

Most of us, relatives and friends of our courageous 
warriors "over there," would be greatly pleased if it 
were possible for us to take up our abode in France 
during the duration of the war and so be near to help 
comfort and cheer our men in their great trials and 
also to enjoy on the ground with them their many tri- 
umphs. 

The Young Men's Christian Association is endeavor- 
ing to give to the men overseas, as well as at home, in 
some degree many of the best things of home, church, 
school, club, entertainment, and friendship, from which 
they have been separated and which are so vital to 
them. The policy of the War Work Council of the 
Young Men's Christian Association is to send from 
time to time representatives of its Executive Commit- 
tee to France for brief visits to study the work of the 
Association and to act as liaison officers between the 
New York and Paris offices. 

In February, 19 18, I was thus commissioned by the 
Executive Committee, and had the good fortune to 
secure the following gentlemen to cooperate with me 
in the work of the mission — Former Senator LeRoy 
Percy of Greenville, Mississippi, a member of the War 
Work Council; John C. Acheson, LL.D., President of 
the Pennsylvania College for Women, Pittsburgh, Pa. ; 



vi FOREWORD 

James W. Kinnear, Pittsburgh, Pa., President of the 
Washington Ordnance Company, Washington, D. C, 
and the author of this book. During the two months 
spent in France our commission was enabled to visit 
nearly all of the camps, from the ports of entry, 
through the great training areas in the center of the 
country, to the front line trenches, traveling nearly six 
thousand miles, and thus had unusual opportunities to 
view all the phases of the work at first hand and to 
meet thousands of the men in the service. 

Dr. Kerr's delightful and winning personality 
brought him an immediate and constant response on 
the part of the individual soldier, whose intimate life 
he was therefore enabled to appreciate thoroughly. 
Combining with these qualities his rare insight and 
good judgment on matters of policy and procedure, Dr. 
Kerr has been able in this book to bring to the homes 
of America in a most graphic manner just those things 
that we would like to know concerning the welfare of 
the men of our glorious Army and Navy. 

Ralph W. Harbison. 

Pittsburgh, Pa., November i, 1918. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword v 

I. The Coming of the Convoy i 

II. The Sound of the Guns 14 

III. Barracks and Billets 30 

IV. Playing the Game 41 

V. The Heart of the Camp 54 

VI. The World in France 70 

VII. A Sunday with the Army 82 

VIII. Women and the War 91 

IX. On Leave 101 

X. The Church in Arms 114 

XI. Sans Camouflage 130 



CHAPTER I 
THE COMING OF THE CONVOY 

We were waiting the coming of the Convoy. It was 
expected to arrive some time during the night, and for 
its coming everything was ready — the docks, the steve- 
dores, the tradesfolk of the port, the ships in the har- 
bor, the officers of the Army and the Navy, and the 
men and women of the Y M C A. We, too, were 
restlessly ready, for the coming of the Convoy into 
port meant not only news and greetings from America, 
but also the defiance of Germany and victory for the 
Allied nations, and immediate opportunity for service. 

The hours of waiting were spent in the fifth floor 
apartment where the "Y" chief and his assistant were 
making their home. The rooms were beautifully fur- 
nished and I was told that the father and son of the 
household had gone to war. The son had been killed 
and the mother and daughters were keeping the home 
together against the time of victory. 

The guests of the evening were two distinguished 
officers, one of the Army and the other of the Navy. 
The Navy and its daring deeds held the center of in- 
terest and it was well and truly represented by our 
distinguished guest, whose name would be recognized 
were I at liberty to give it. 

I 



2 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

As a rule, men of the Army are the worst critics of 
the Army, and men of the Navy the severest judges 
of the Navy, but our hero of the sea was unstinted in 
his praise of the American Navy, and his comrade of 
the Army readily seconded all his optimistic overtures. 
We were told tales of men who go down to the sea 
in ships and we picked our steps without blundering 
in the questions we asked and the information we 
sought. It is no easy task to ask sensible questions 
concerning military and naval secrets. I overheard a 
genial colonel graciously answer an unduly inquisitive 
war correspondent by saying, "It is not permissible 
for me to talk about that" ! One can gather lots of 
news in France, but most of the news turns out to be 
rumor. There is a military proverb which passes as 
current coin in France to this effect : "He that knows 
doesn't talk, and he that talks doesn't know." The 
boys in the Army say, "A military secret consists of 
inaccurate information concerning something which 
nobody knows anything about and about which every- 
body talks." 

We were told of the "mystery ships" which, having 
served their day, have passed into history. They were 
freighters of the sea, fitted with machine guns and 
manned by experts of the Navy, who were dressed 
like ordinary seamen. One of these "mystery ships" 
holds the record of having ended the career of five 
submarines. We were told how a submarine had come 
to the surface so close to a French cruiser that it was 
impossible for it to discharge its torpedo, lest the sub- 
marine itself should be destroyed. The gunners on 



THE COMING OF THE CONVOY 3 

the cruiser turned their guns point blank and blew the 
German pirate to atoms. 

We were told interesting tales of how submarines 
had fought submarines, which I suppose the censor 
would not choose to sanction for publication, but our 
guests were firm in the conviction that by the end of 
1918 the submarine menace would be mastered. "Up 
to the present the policy pursued has been mainly 
defensive," one said. "Soon, however, something will 
happen and the end of the German submarines will 
come." Of course we wanted to ask another question 
so that he would explain exactly what he meant, but 
the bars were up and the subject of conversation 
changed. Afterwards, when we heard about Zee- 
brugge and how the British Navy had closed the port 
at Ostend, we thought we understood what he meant. 

Throughout the Navy there seems to be a quiet and 
justified confidence that the submarine will be out of 
business before the year 1918 has run its course. We 
hear little of the daring deeds of the men of the Navy, 
but they are among our first heroes. All of them are 
on board some mystery ship and by day and night they 
keep the channels of the sea safe for the traffic of the 
nations of freedom. Every morning the British mine 
sweepers make the English Channel safe. It was 
interesting to learn that English mines, when they 
drift from their moorings, turn over and are harmless. 
German floating mines remain intact and explode any- 
where. 

The men of the navies of all the allied nations wear 
no medals, no croix de guerre, no distinguishing recog- 



4 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

nition for service rendered, no badge to allure the ever 
vigilant spy. They sail they know not where, from 
unnamed port to unnamed port, and are out upon the 
sea from dawn to dark, from dark to dawn. These 
men are among the finest heroes the world has ever 
seen, and every man of them is worthy of the honor 
given to men in front line trenches. 

The sailor at your side is sure to be a hero and his 
story will thrill you if you get him to tell it. Traveling 
through France I met a young Lieutenant of the 
French Navy, who did not seem to have passed his 
twentieth year. Educated in an English school, he had 
acted for two years as an interpreter with the English 
fleet. His father is a member of the French Parlia- 
ment. He had been a year with the French fleet out 
on the Mediterranean, and had just been home on a 
fifteen-day holiday and was returning to another year's 
work. He had no knowledge of the military or naval 
situation, but he had absolute trust in his leaders and 
perfect confidence in the outcome. He had been tor- 
pedoed seventeen times, five times he had been in the 
water, and once he had seen seven of his comrades 
swept from the bridge in a storm. He would have 
been the last to think of himself as a hero, and he is 
typical of thousands who today defy Germany's dan- 
ger zone. 

In the morning the Convoy was in. Thirty thousand 
men had arrived, every man of them disappointed be- 
cause the enemy had not been encountered, but all of 
them glad to see the land of the tricolor. There is 
little shouting and cheering in this war and the ships 



THE COMING OF THE CONVOY 5 

had slipped into port unheralded. Only as the grey- 
mist of the morning lifted did the newly arrived giants 
of the harbor reveal themselves. The Convoy had 
done its work and the ships had come safely in from 
sea. How strange they looked, each one splashed with 
color after a manner that defied all attempts at ex- 
planation ! The science of camouflage follows its own 
order. Sometimes it is a mysterious and mottled 
order; sometimes it is plain and prosaic; sometimes 
it follows broad distinguished lines ; sometimes it is 
fantastic and poetic; and again it is of an order that 
is murderously monotonous. 

If today we fear the submarine less than we did, 
let us thank the Convoy. If the hands of the Germans 
are tied let us not forget that the Hun still prides him- 
self in his pagan policy, and let us remember that 
the Allied Navy holds the supremacy of the sea. Since 
the war broke out the British Navy has transported 
13,000,000 men, of whom only 2,700 have been lost. 
Besides these millions of men the British Navy has 
carried to the battle front 2,000,000 horses and mules, 
500,000 motor cars, 25,000,000 tons of explosives and 
supplies, 51,000,000 tons of oil and fuel, and 130,000,- 
000 tons of food, and has swept the warships of Ger- 
many from the sea. When it is within her power Ger- 
many still sends sailors and passengers adrift in open 
boats, and what that means only the thousands who 
have experienced it can know. I have heard soldiers 
and sailors in France try to describe the terror of those 
open boats. One American boy who had been brought 
into port, rescued by a British patrol boat, said, in 



6 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

telling his experience, "I was in the sea for five hours. 
After I was picked up and brought to land, for three 
nights, in my dreams, I was in the water." 

Mr. Alfred Noyes has described what sometimes 
takes place when men and women and little children 
fall into the hands of the modern disciples of Kultur. 

"The two boats," he says, "kept together till dark; 
but at 8 140 p. m. the chief officer's boat capsized, owing 
to the choppy sea, and the sight of the other boat was 
lost in the confusion. All hands, after a struggle, 
managed to regain the boat, but she remained full of 
water, with her tanks adrift. 

"Before midnight she had again capsized three 
times; and the reader may imagine for himself what 
scenes were enacted in that lonely darkness of wind 
and sea. Only four hands out of fifteen were left 
at the end of the third desperate struggle. They were 
the mate, the carpenter, and two seamen. 

"They saw one or two vessels in the early morning, 
but their only means of signaling was a handkerchief 
on a stick, and they were not noticed. The boat was 
battered to and fro like a cockle-shell in the smoking 
seas; and about eight o'clock in the morning the two 
seamen became too exhausted to cling on. They were 
slowly washed overboard. Their faces and hands 
swirled up once or twice in the foam, and then dis- 
appeared. 

"At five o'clock on that day, after long hours of 
struggle, the mate, who was sitting aft, gradually 
dropped into the water in the bottom of the boat and 
died there. The carpenter was now the only survivor. 
All that he endured in the long following night and 
day, with the dead man washing to and fro at his 
feet, and the dead face looking up at him through 



THE COMING OF THE CONVOY 7 

the bubbling water, can only be imagined. He says 
that 'nothing particular happened.' 

"At nightfall on the next day, more than twenty- 
four hours later, after twenty-four hours of lonely 
battering and slow starvation, he and the dead body 
were picked up by a Grimsby trawler and landed at St. 
Ives. Nothing was heard of the other boat." 

Thanks to the Convoy, such stories of the sea are 
becoming less and less familiar. Victory, however, 
will not cause us to forget the price Germany must 
pay for peace. It must be nothing less than the 
price of penitence. 

There is something about a Convoy that suggests 
security. It has the flavor of friendliness. My friend, 
Major Thomas S. Arbuthnot of Base Hospital 2J, told 
me of the marvelous trip he and his comrades had ex- 
perienced crossing the Atlantic, and how by a signal 
gun from one of the destroyers they had been saved 
from a submarine attack. He said, "Just to think of 
those little destroyers plunging through the sea, tearing 
through the darkness, undismayed and undaunted, 
never resting, never tired, and then when we had 
entered the harbor and felt the sense of security steal- 
ing over us, to see them turn and without a salute go 
back to sea to take up their vigil for other seafaring 
soldiers. I wanted at least to say, 'Thank you/ but 
they were gone." Hats off to the Convoy! Thomas 
Huxley, after he had seen the shipping of New York 
harbor, exclaimed, "If I were not a man, I would like 
to be a tug!" Had he lived in our day and known 
the new dangers and the new service of the sea, he 



8 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

would say, "If I were not a man, and a soldier, I would 
like to be a submarine destroyer and convoy the 
soldiers of freedom to the shores of France." 

Among the first to welcome the Convoy is the 
Y M C A. To see one's own language in a foreign 
land is like meeting a friend, and as the morning broke 
the troops on both sides of the ship were face to face 
with the sign of the Red Triangle and its welcome : 



American Soldiers and Sailors 




in Franc^«ELC0MES YOU 



At this Basfe you/will find 

1. The Officers' Club. V 3*/ln every Camp one or 

2. The City Hut (To the cofe?/ more Huts with no key in 
ner and one block north)y the Door. 



On each troopship a "Y" Secretary had kept com- 
pany with the men across the water. He had entered 
into close and friendly relations with them and by the 
time the Convoy was in port he had bound them to 
him in enduring friendship. 

On board ship men have time to think and time 
to get acquainted. The Secretary discovers talent. 
On the ship which took us over we were in great need 
of a pianist and accidentally discovered him among a 
group of marines going over for hydroplane service. 



THE COMING OF THE CONVOY 9 

He happened to be a Roman Catholic and was hesitant 
about playing at the Sunday morning service. He 
found out, however, that distinctions of civil life do 
not carry over into the Army. He knew how to play 
the piano and was eager to serve, and so together we 
made of the Sunday service a great success. Next 
day I found him depressed, his eyes filled with tears, 
and heard from him the story of his life. He had left 
at home a little motherless girl of four. 

Sometimes a man among the troops finds the sea 
and the submarine and the danger zone all but too 
much for his courage. After three days down below 
where he had seen the doctor twice a day, a colored 
lad came on deck, rather weak and pale. The wind 
was blowing, southwest by west, and the boat was 
not, as you say, quite steady. One of our Y M C A 
men found him and said: "How are you going, 
George?" "Pretty poorly, Sir, I feel pretty low." 
Said his comforter, "Well, we'll soon be over now." 
"Yes," said George, "but the worse is yet to come. 
Them submarines live right in here, don't they ?" The 
"Y" man told him about the speed of the ship and 
those dogs of war, the guns pointing out to sea, and 
after a few minutes of thought George said: "If I 
hadn't come on this trip, I'd been married next month." 
His friend said, "She'll wait for you, all right, and 
she'll think all the more of you for doing what you 
are going to do for her and your country." 

After a long pause during which the ship tipped 
and rolled, George said : "I've been thinking a lot dur- 
ing these last few days and I have come to the con- 



io PORT TO LISTENING POST 

elusion that if I ever get through this voyage and do 
my bit, I'll never get into a place of excitement again." 
And having said this, he went below. 

Every soldier has his own Convoy story. I was par- 
ticularly interested in Joe Rogers' story. Joe is at 
present acting as chauffeur at one of the great rest 
camps. Accidentally we had him as our guest for 
luncheon at the Hotel de France, in a little town that 
nestles close to the beautiful French Alps. Unaware 
that he was interesting he told us of his trip across 
the sea in one of the great converted German liners 
that now run between America and France. "I was 
six decks down," he said, "and it was like being in 
hell. There were six thousand of us on board that 
ship, and they would not let us sleep on deck. The 
port-holes were closed as tight as a bank vault, and 
you could see the darkness and cut the air with a 
knife." "I was six decks down," he repeated, "and 
every morning when the gong sounded I woke up 
unconscious and had to walk an hour on deck before 
I came to my senses. We ran out of one storm into 
another and I thought the end of the world had come. 
No ! I was not sick, but you should have seen the 
bunch ! It was like a street market on Saturday night. 
For three days the old boat played leap-frog with the 
waves, and sometimes when it didn't quite make the 
leap it would lie on the top of the wave and quiver 
until I wondered whether it would turn over again on 
its back, or topple over on its stomach, but of course it 
always came back. Four of the gunners were swept 
from the deck, and when we last saw them they were 



THE COMING OF THE CONVOY n 

on the crest of a wave, their hands up as if signaling 
a farewell. Ships at sea in war time do not stop at 
the call, 'Man overboard/ We had to sit on the floor 
when mess was served, and it sure was a mess ! To 
keep from sliding I wrapped my legs around one of 
the pillars and had my hands free. They gave us 
Cream of Wheat for breakfast, but the floor and walls 
and sometimes the roof got most of the Cream of 
Wheat, and then when the ship lurched we all slid 
like an avalanche from one side to the other with a 
bang. I want to cross the darned old ocean once 
more, and that is when I go home." 

Among the first to come on board the troop ships 
are the "Y" men. They take with them a few ciga- 
rettes, a little chocolate, and always a welcome. They 
answer questions and give directions about money, 
about France, about the life on shore, and hand the 
men a little printed slip with information to help them 
through their first days in France. They give advice 
concerning leisure time and directions about places 
and points of interest. 

At one port of entry the men were given this printed 
welcome : 

MEN, you are coming among a people, who have 
seen fought upon their soil many of the greatest battles 
in the history of the world, a people, whose sons have 
in this war gladly given their lives and who have been 
backed by unparalleled sacrifices on the part of their 
loved ones at home. It is they, with their splendid 
fighting brothers of the British Empire, who have 
stood, for nearly four years, between Germany and 
your own home land. 



12 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

Remember always that you are in France as the 
GUESTS of a noble people and have come, not to win 
the war for the Allies, but to help them to win it. In 
the minds of the French people you represent the 
UNITED STATES, and wherever you go, we trust 
that by your exemplary conduct, your chivalry, and 
your respect for these people and their customs, you 
will endear yourselves to them and thereby cement the 
two Republics in an everlasting bond of mutual sym- 
pathy and respect. Remember too, that in France you 
are among a people who are universally polite and who 
set great store by the smaller courtesies of life. For 
the slightest service you will always receive thanks 
("Merci, Monsieur") and will always be expected to 
give them. 

God bless and keep each one of you. 

The American Y M C A. 

A thousand men had come ashore at one of the 
French ports where they mingled with the English 
Tommies, and I was permitted in one of the British 
huts to give them a welcome. The men had been at 
sea for nearly twenty days, and for twenty-four hours 
had been in the English Channel. They said they were 
lost in the mine fields. For nearly a month they had 
been out of touch with the world. They were hungry 
for news. I told them of the German drive on Paris, 
of Pershing's message to General Foch offering him 
the American Army, of British valor and French hero- 
ism, and of the hope which America through the com- 
ing of her soldiers had brought to the Allies. 

The British soldiers with their seamed faces and 
weather-beaten countenances gave a touch of prophecy 
to the situation. Our lads — what was between them 



THE COMING OF THE CONVOY 13 

and the seamed face and the weather-beaten counte- 
nance, and the dread monotony of war? The welcome 
was short, and then in a moment of heroism I told 
the new arrivals I would try to answer any of their 
questions. Immediately the machine gun batteries 
were opened : 

"How far are we from the front ?" 

"How about the chow over here?" 

"Do the soldiers get their pay regularly?" 

"What will you give us for the head of the Kaiser?" 

"Will there be a ' Y' wherever we go ?" 

"How often do we get our mail ?" 

"How many American soldiers are there in France ?" 

These are a few of the questions they asked. I 
tried to answer them. I told them that the mail was 
very uncertain, but that the number of letters they 
received depended on the frequency with which those 
at home wrote, and advised them to have their letters 
numbered, for they might get their fifteenth letter first. 
I offered them a commission and a life pension for the 
head of the Kaiser, and told them that I did not know 
how many American soldiers were in France, but 
hoped there would soon be enough to smash Germany. 

Two men each volunteered a suggestion. The first 
remark was to the effect that if the Army did its work 
as well as the "Y," the war would soon be over, which 
statement was received with a round of applause. The 
second remark was facetious and interpretative of the 
coming of the Convoy. "If ever I get home and that 
Old Lady they call the Statue of Liberty wants to see 
me again she'll have to turn round." 



CHAPTER II 
THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 

The heart of America is in France. A million and 
more of our boys are there and more are to follow. 
I have seen thousands of them and some whom I 
wished to see I failed to discover. But France is at 
war, and our Army is at war and is ever on the move. 
All we know is that they are "Somewhere in France." 
Said one lad when asked if he knew where a certain 
soldier was, "I know where I am; I don't know where 
anyone else is, and nobody knows where I am." Some- 
times the censor relents and lets information regarding 
the whereabouts of a soldier go through to his family. 
Recently this statement was received: "I am sorry I 
cannot tell you where I am ; but I venture to state that 
I am not where I was, but where I was before I left 
to go where I have just come from." 

One knows as soon as he is in France that he is in 
a war atmosphere. Even before he lands he is face 
to face with mystery and the menace of war. There 
are Mystery Ships upon the sea, and the land is full 
of mystery. A little grove of pine trees may be a 
battery, and the hillside a fort. The hillside may look 
quite natural, when suddenly a gun speaks and you 
know that you are near the battle line. Everywhere 
there are signs warning you of danger. In the railroad 

14 



THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 15 

trains and in the stations one reads the words "Taisez 
Vous, Mefier Vous, Les Oreilles Ennemies Vous Ecou- 
tent." Since the days when Governor Gallieni stood 
guard at Paris, when the Germans were driving along 
the Marne, that sign has been before the eyes of the 
French people, "Don't Talk, Beware, The Enemy is 
Listening." 

Even Paris is like an armed camp. The poet some- 
where speaks of Paris as a woman's town with flowers 
in her hair. But the Paris we remember is gone, and 
there is a new Paris — a Paris with hangars and air- 
ships, with cellar gratings sealed for an expected gas 
attack, with window panes reenforced with strips of 
paper, with no private automobiles, with hotel life 
stripped of fashion and luxury, with the Arc de Tri- 
omphe, the windows of the Louvre, and the statues 
in the Place de la Concorde buttressed and safeguarded 
with sandbags. It is Paris with dark nights and un- 
lighted streets welcoming fog and rain and mist. It 
is Paris with signs upon the houses calling attention 
to caves, to improvised dbris, where ten, fifteen, twenty, 
or one hundred people may find security when a raid 
is on. It is Paris with flickering blue street-lamps 
marking the crossings and the metropolitan sta- 
tions. It is Paris alert and watchful, but self-reliant 
and secure. Candy shops and cigar stores are gone. 
Here and there the shutters on the windows bear the 
sign that the man power that carried on the business 
is at the front. The soldiers of all the Allied nations 
meet and pass often without salute, and fifty miles 
away the enemy is pounding at the door. 



i6 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

Nevertheless, with all the bombing and shelling, it 
is Paris. It is still Paris unshaken and unharmed. 
You have to search for the damage done after you 
thought the city had been shaken to its very founda- 
tion. 

I was in Paris when the Germans expected to break 
through. The Kaiser is reported to have said : "They 
are not united, I will beat them." God knows how 
nearly he succeeded, and he timed his blows and 
concentrated all he had upon that drive. It was 
then that the mystery of the long-range gun and the 
bombing in the nights disturbed the confidence of the 
French Capital, and for ten days Paris seemed to move 
out and those that remained spent restless days and 
sleepless nights. Yet Paris is unharmed and un- 
afraid. She has learned to hear the shriek of the 
siren and to sleep on. For a while she listened to 
the beating of the drum telling that the long-range 
gun was in action, and then she laughed the drummer 
from the streets. A shell fell upon a worshiping con- 
gregation and seventy people were killed. That was 
a German victory! A bomb fell upon a maternity 
hospital and the list of dead included a nurse, two 
mothers, and a little child just born. That is the way 
Germany is conquering Paris. Next day a French 
newspaper published these defiant lines entitled "Vic- 
tory." 

"Across the plains of Picardy 
Proud Amiens flings her taunt at thee, 
Bidding thee tame her if thy will 
Transcends the faith that lights her still. 



THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 17 

A line of freemen bars the way 
Where all thy legions lunge and sway 
And wither into shadow. Where 
Is any show of triumph there? 

"But dare man say that all thy pain 
Is bootless, all thine effort vain ? 
That all thy trafficking in life 
Through four black years of frustrate strife 
Has gained thee nothing but a curse? 
The list of dead includes a nurse, 
Two mothers, and a new-born child. 

"The murder of the undefiled, 
The random slaughter of the weak — 
What greater triumphs wouldst thou seek ?" 

We saw those wonderful French armies moving up 
to battle. They came from the South and from the 
West, but mostly from the East — from East of Rheims 
and beyond Verdun, leaving our men to man the lines. 
They came by trains that passed us every seven 
minutes, loaded in cattle cars, forty men to the car. 
Every seven minutes a military train passed with men 
and war materials and mounted machine guns ready 
for action, and every half-hour a hospital train 
equipped with operating cars and doctors and nurses 
went by, to return in a few days with its load of 
shattered and wounded humanity. They came in 
trucks, long lines of automobiles moving quickly over 
those wonderful French roads, with guns and ammuni- 
tion, with food and men. They came in troops of 
cavalry over the dusty roads, messing by the side of 



18 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

the railroad, and climbing down over the bank to 
secure the French newspaper which we threw from the 
train telling them of the tidings of battle. There 
seemed to be no end to the line of march, no limit to 
the men France had to pour in to stem that German 
advance. One wonders whether more to admire the 
soldiers or the mothers and fathers and sweethearts 
who bade them goodbye. Those soldiers, who had 
seen two, three, and four years of war, waved their 
goodbyes to the French peasants who threw them a 
flower or a kiss and listened to the ringing confidence 
with which they called back "Comptez sur nous," and 
count on them they did. Soon we heard that the Ger- 
man armies had come to a standstill. 

I was in a British base camp when the drive was 
on. I saw many of the 33,000 wounded British 
Tommies who were brought into the base hospital 
within the limit of a week and saw the forwarding of 
numbers of these to Channel ports for embarkation to 
"Blighty," in order to make room for the wounded 
fresh from the battle front. I shall never forget those 
hospital trains, car after car, and those ambulances 
with four men in each, lying so silent and so still, with 
four pairs of stockinged feet resting now from the 
battle, but resting perhaps in agony and pain. Then 
I went into the "Y" hut, where the comrades of those 
wounded men, who had come safely through the fight, 
had returned for a three days' leave, and in the twilight 
those boys who had faced death and hell were quietly 
singing together some of the old songs of love and 
home. They were sitting on those narrow backless 



THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 19 

benches and singing from the stereopticon screen on 
which the words of the song had been printed. It was 
easy to tell where their thoughts were, for they were 
singing not the ragtime melodies which we associate 
with soldier life, but those old songs that have ploughed 
their way into the heart of humanity, and this is the 
favorite song those boys whose hearts were at home, 
sang: 

"When the golden sun sinks in the hills, 

And the toil of a long day is o'er — 
Though the road may be long, in the lilt of a song 

I forgot I was weary before. 
Far ahead, where the blue shadows fall, 

I shall come to contentment and rest ; 
And the toils of the day will be all charmed away 

In my little grey home in the west. 

"There are hands that will welcome me in, 
There are lips I am yearning to kiss — 
There are two eyes that shine just because they are 
mine 
And a thousand things other men miss. 
It's a corner of heaven itself, 

Though it's only a tumble-down nest — 
But, with love brooding there, why, no place can 
compare 
With my little grey home in the west." 

In the morning, with their hearts full of home, they 
were back in the battle line. 

France was calling. England with her back to the 
wall was calling in the words of General Haig: "There 



20 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

is no other course open to us but to fight it out ; every 
position must be held to the last man; there must be 
no retirement." In the battle of Verdun the Germans 
employed twenty and a half divisions, but in the first 
German drive of 1918 there were one hundred and 
twenty-seven divisions and one hundred and two divi- 
sions were concentrated against the British line. In 
April the British officers' casualty list exceeded ten 
thousand. Yet Britain said, "There must be no re- 
tirement." Canada and the heroes of Vimy Ridge 
were calling. They understood the message that Gen- 
eral Curry sent them. "Advance, or fall where you 
stand, facing the enemy." And, America heard, and 
America answered. 

I never expect to see a nation thrilled as France was 
thrilled when she read those few brief sentences of 
General Pershing, which offered the American forces 
to the Allied nations. I had the honor of lunching 
with General Pershing the day after, and when I spoke 
to him of the fine thing he had done, he said, "There 
was nothing else to do." Then I was told how it 
had happened. He had gone to the headquarters of 
General Foch, and, in his democratic, American way, 
had made the offer to him. Grasping him by the hand, 
General Foch said to him, "Come and tell the men out 
here what you have just told me," and leading Gen- 
eral Pershing out to where General Petain and Premier 
Clemenceau were standing, he said, "Tell these men 
what you have just told me." Then quietly and in 
French, General Pershing spoke the words that thrilled 
them and thrilled France and thrilled America: 



THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 21 

"I come to say to you that the American people 
would hold it a great honor for our troops if they 
were engaged in the present battle. I ask it of you, 
in my name and in that of the American people. 

"There is at this moment no other question than that 
of fighting. Infantry, artillery, aviation — all that we 
have are yours, to dispose of them as you will. Others 
are coming who are as numerous as will be necessary." 

These words thrilled France, and French soldiers 
everywhere lifted up their heads and hearts. One 
French soldier pointed to the lines of Pershing's mes- 
sage and said, "Deuxieme Verdun" and showed me 
by his gestures how the Allied armies would twist the 
Kaiser's neck. 

I saw our first division move up. It was a great 
sight. I journeyed with a French officer who acted 
as interpreter for our Army. The sight of those 
American soldiers moving up into that historic battle 
line marked an epoch in the war. They represented 
the millions that America was preparing to send to 
France, and they said to Germany in words that we 
now may make our own: 

"No parleying now — America has all one breath; 
We're with you now from shore to shore, 
Ye men of ours, 'tis victory or death." 

In France two convictions took possession of me. 
I think they are the convictions which any man will 
have when he has simplified an intricate situation, and 
has thought through into the fundamental simplicities 
and the needs of the hour. 



22 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

The first conviction is that the first duty of America 
is to lay aside every other interest and concentrate 
herself on the winning of this war. Near the front 
line trenches, the chief of staff of one of our army 
divisions spoke of the standard of military efficiency 
which had been set for America. That standard, he 
said, has been set for us by France. He spoke of 
the French soldiers, who for nearly four years had 
been sleeping in French graves. In a little village 
cemetery on the battlefield of the Marne I counted 125 
graves, almost as many graves as there were in- 
habitants in the village. 

The standard has been set for us by Belgium, whose 
women and children are exiles and whose men have 
been deported or are clinging to the fifteen-mile strip 
of homeland that is still theirs. 

The standard has been set for us by Britain, with 
her enduring patience and her great fleet guarding the 
seas over which our soldiers travel to the battle front, 
with her cities and colleges robbed of their youth and 
her soldiers sleeping in foreign soil, her casualty list 
in 1917 exceeding 800,000, being 500,000 more than 
the French. 

But above all, he said, the standard has been set 
for us by Germany. It has been set by German effi- 
ciency and German strategy and German sacrifice. 
To underrate or underestimate that German standard 
will mean our undoing. 

It is Germany that has challenged us, and we must 
match German efficiency and German valor and Ger- 
man arms with American efficiency and American 



THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 23 

valor and American arms. And, if Germany can be 
so powerful, so full of spirit and sacrifice, so defiant 
of danger and death for an inhuman, damnable, Christ- 
less cause, we of America can surpass her in efficiency, 
in daring, and in defiance of death for a cause that 
is noble and true and Christlike. 

General Pershing's words to us were: "Let us stop 
talking about reconstruction and about peace and about 
what will happen after the war is over, and let us 
see to it that we wage a successful war." This is the 
military point of view, and however necessary it is to 
prepare for peace and to be forearmed against the 
coming of the days of victory, we must gird ourselves 
for the winning of the victory and to the conviction 
that victory may be long delayed. 

We shall not succeed because of Germany's failure, 
nor because of Austria's breakdown. We must win, 
not by our peace talk, but by our arms, and we must 
succeed not because of the overthrow of Germany's 
politicians, but because of the overthrow of her army. 
We demand a victory not based upon a peace pledge, 
but upon the triumph of our arms. Peace pledges are 
scraps of paper to Germany. 

France is not talking about when the war will end ; 
she is saying to Germany in one voice that this war can 
end only in her defeat, whether it end this summer or 
next summer, or the summer five years hence. And 
America must tell Germany that every month she adds 
to the war, every crime she adds to crime, and every 
battle she adds to battle, will make her defeat both 
more sure and more terribly tragic. 



24 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

The second conviction which possessed me was one 
of optimism. We need not worry about the physical 
and moral condition of our men in France. "Tell them 
at home," said General Pershing, "not to worry about 
their boys. They will come home better than when 
they left." I am not blind to the dangers that exist 
in France for our men. I think it is possible to over- 
idealize France. I hope I shall not be misunderstood, 
but the moral and religious ideas of France are not 
those of America. France's attitude toward temper- 
ance and toward immoral men and women is not our 
attitude. When in a port city at which our men land 
there are thousands of licensed prostitutes, how could 
one who knew these conditions be an idealist? How 
could one blind his eyes to the dangers that lurk in 
the way of every American soldier, when he knows 
that wine is the common beverage in France and that 
total abstinence is all but an unknown virtue? The 
moral conditions in France are neither black nor 
white, and the moral conditions of our American sol- 
diers are neither black nor white. The American 
soldier is not a saint. He is just a common man. He 
is much like other soldiers. He can make the words 
of the British Tommy his own : 

"Our padre, 'e says I'm a sinner, 
And John Bull says I'm a saint, 
And they're both of 'em bound to be liars, 
For I'm neither of 'em, I ain't. 
I'm a man, and a man's a mixture 
Right down from 'is very birth, 
For part of 'im comes from heaven, 
And part of 'im comes from earth." 



THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 25 

Nevertheless, man for man, our soldiers are better 
than they were in civil life, and in integrity and moral 
purity they hold the best record of any army on earth. 
I do not say that they do not drink. I can only testify 
that I did not see a drunken American soldier in 
France. I do not say that immorality does not exist 
in the Army. I know that it does. But I do know 
that conditions are better than they were, and I know 
that the moral condition of the men is better than 
it was when they entered the Army. The records are 
open for all those who wish to read. 

After careful investigation of the subject I am con- 
vinced that ours is the cleanest army that the world 
has ever seen. The credit belongs to every one. It 
belongs to the United States Government, which seeks 
above all an efficient army. The credit belongs to the 
officers in charge, who are more interested in their 
men than any professional investigator can ever be. 
It belongs greatly to the Y M C A that is doing one of 
the finest pieces of work in France that the world has 
ever seen. It belongs to the Red Cross, but primarily, 
it belongs to the men themselves. They have been 
lifted out of themselves. They are the new crusaders 
of the twentieth century. Some of them do not know 
exactly why they are there. They sing, ''We're here 
because we're here, Because we're here, Because we're 
here," but they know, all of them know, that they are 
there for America and for France and for England 
and for humanity, and they know that they are there 
to win. They understand the countersign, and have 
estimated the price they have to pay: 



26 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

"Who passeth here? We of the new brigade, 
Who come in aid, to take your place who fell. 
What is the countersign ? That we have weighed, 
The cost ye paid — yet come ! 
Pass, all is well. ,, 

Said a Frenchman, whose son had been in the army 
for forty-five months, when asked concerning the fight- 
ing qualities of our men, "They fight just like our 
Blue Devils. ,, That is the highest compliment a 
Frenchman can pay, and every last man is dissatisfied 
until he is in the fighting line with his back to the 
wall and his face to the foe. 

The response to religion on the part of the men 
was something of a surprise to me. I was permitted 
to speak to thousands of men in France, from the ports 
of entry to where the singing of the Gospel was ac- 
companied by the sound of the battle, and the religious 
receptivity of the men increased as I drew nearer to 
where the guns spoke their tragic message. The great 
words of our religion — God, Christ, Faith, Hope, 
Prayer, Immortality, Service, Life, Love, Justice, 
Duty, and the Cross — are words that against the back- 
ground of the curtain of fire are luminous with new 
meaning and the power of a personal appeal. Men are 
not only receiving the religious message, they are ask- 
ing for it and demanding it from us. I do not mean 
that every boy kneels at his bunk; few of them do. I 
mean that they respond to the thing we call religion. 
Before you preach you may hear them singing some- 
thing like this: 



THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 27 

"Goodbye, Ma! Goodbye, Pa! Goodbye, mule, with 
yer old hee-haw ! 
I may not know what the war's about, 
But you bet, by gosh, I'll soon find out. 
An' O my sweetheart, don't you fear, I'll bring you 
a king for a souvenir ; 
I'll bring you a Turk and a Kaiser, too, 
An' that's about all one feller could do !" 

They have no use for a religion that is based upon 
pious platitudes or sentimental exhortations. They do 
not worship a God who is a pacifist, but one whose 
"blood-red banner streams afar." They believe in a 
Christianity like that of Oliver Cromwell, that will not 
hesitate, if the cause of righteousness demands it, to 
take the head of a king. 

On the battlefields of Europe the channels of new 
thought and moral conviction are being opened up. 
Said an American officer to one of our "Y" men on 
board a transport, "I used to pride myself on being an 

atheist, but this d war has knocked h out of 

my atheism." After a bishop had delivered an ad- 
dress on the subject of German propaganda, a disap- 
pointed American lad came to one of my American 

friends and said, "D it, I thought the Bishop was 

going to give us some religion." The Bishop had 
often given the men religion, but this boy's expression 
of his expectation is only a revelation of the fact that 
a religious message is always welcome on any day and 
at any place. Instead of the war making for a break- 
down of faith and the overthrow of the Church, it 
has given the Church the greatest opportunity in 



28 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

human history and enthroned faith above all other 
virtues. 

Then while the guns are playing over their heads, 
and after they have sung their "Hee-haw songs," you 
say to the boys, "Well, let's have some hymns. What 
shall we sing ?" Then, unconsciously, they reveal their 
hearts and they say, "Rock of Ages." They know 
what it is to have to hide in an abri in the side of 
the hills, and those familiar consecrated words have 
a new meaning, for they sing them with a sort of 
a thrill: "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide 
myself in Thee." Then they want "Jesus, Lover of 
my Soul." In my snug contentedness, I had often 
sung it, but it had never had the meaning for me that 
it had that night under the sound of the guns. "Other 
refuge have I none." And then they want "Nearer, 
My God, to Thee." I shall never forget how they sang 
it. We think we know how to sing it. We think we 
know how to sing, "E'en though it be a cross." Under 
the black sky, where you can see the flash of the guns 
and the star shells burst over your head, or, what is 
worse under the bright moonlight sky, where the 
aeroplanes, those messengers of death, hover over 
your head, you discover what it means to sing "E'en 
though it be a cross." And then, perhaps most popu- 
lar of all, they want "Abide with Me." 

"When other helpers fail and comforts flee, 
Help of the helpless, O abide with me." 

What other message is there for them or for us? 
It is a message not of weak despair, but one of a con- 



THE SOUND OF THE GUNS 29 

fident and abiding trust. In the midst of human help- 
lessness and in the presence of enshrouding mystery, 
with their faces toward foe and their hearts set on vic- 
tory, they sing: 

"Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; 
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies: 
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows 

flee: 
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me." 

I think I have seen into the heart of the American 
soldier, and I know that all is well. 



CHAPTER III 
BARRACKS AND BILLETS 

The American Army is a well-cared- for body of 
men. One look at an American soldier reveals the fact 
that he is well fed, well paid, and well housed. The 
American soldier is a satisfied soldier. 

Writing back from France to his mother, one of the 
more-than-a-million now in France furnishes first 
hand testimony to the efficiency of American barracks 
and billets overseas. 

"When I entered the service I was fat, just plain 
loose flesh, that was only a burden to carry around. I 
lost thirty pounds before I had been over here a month. 
Since, I have regained it, but it is no longer fat nor 
a burden. Instead, it is muscle and is used about seven 
days a week, for the purpose of making the world safe 
for Democracy. Work never hurt anybody, and I am 
proud to say that I am a member of the Fifteenth 
U. S. Engineers, and am able to work. Trusting that 
you are well, I am, 

Your loving son." 

The British Army is housed in tents; their base 
camps are great tent cities. In the morning sun, they 
are most impressive. The camp is a city in khaki. The 
streets are named after the familiar thoroughfares 
of London or the towns and villages of the soldiers' 
homeland. 

30 



BARRACKS AND BILLETS 31 

One comes upon Piccadilly and the Strand, upon 
Russell Square and Downing Street. There is a 
touch of familiarity and friendliness and withal a 
prophecy of permanency about it all. 

In the tent city one finds much that he finds at 
home, with the military purpose always evident. 
Twenty or thirty Y M C A centers furnish entertain- 
ment and social and religious opportunity. The 
Church of England, not fully satisfied with the reli- 
gious opportunities furnished by the "Y," has equipped 
a hut where the Altar is always awaiting the penitent 
and the man of prayer. 

The Army Canteen, both wet and dry, is thronged 
with men, going forward to, or returning from, the 
battle. 

I was charmed with the Hospitality House of the 
Y M C A which is operated by the splendid English 
women who have made such a success of the Woman's 
Department. This place of retreat in the midst of 
the busy camp is prepared against the day when in 
the hospital a lad wounded sorely, or perhaps dying, 
reaches out his hand for home, and by permission of 
the authorities, father or mother, wife or sweetheart, 
hurries in the night across the channel to watch for 
an hour beside his bed and to find a welcome in this 
home among the tents. 

Flowers are in the garden, and the touch of woman- 
hood everywhere: the very pictures on the walls 
speak of home and hope. It struck me as one of the 
most Christlike and beautiful of all the things I saw 
in France. 



32 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

The American Army lives either in barracks or in 
billets. Few tents are in use. Sometimes a company 
will sleep in the open on the banks of a French river, 
but they are on their way to more permanent quar- 
ters. 

The barracks in France are constructed after the 
design which has become familiar to us in our great 
American cantonments. In this, we have followed 
the French system. Sometimes our armies occupy 
barracks formerly occupied by the French, and some- 
times in the same camp both French and American 
soldiers are quartered. 

The building is long and narrow, with beds along 
each wall and an aisle down the center. The mess 
halls are similarly constructed and the entire camp 
is equipped with electric light and running water. The 
officers' barracks are divided into little rooms, perhaps 
ten feet square, open at the top, the hallway running 
through the center between the rooms back to the 
mess hall. In each room, there is a little stove, and 
at night happiness and contentment reign. 

The French climate tests the enduring qualities of 
our men. Not so rigorous as our winter, the French 
cold, nevertheless, penetrates to the very heart, and 
no quantity of army blankets suffices to satisfy. Of 
course the hardened soldier has a fire always burning 
in his own warm blood, but notwithstanding all the 
heroism of army life, a fire is the most welcome 
friend in France. 

One night, I stepped into the headquarters of a com- 
pany of the 15th Engineers. This company was sepa- 



BARRACKS AND BILLETS 33 

rated from the rest of the regiment, and the men 
were drawn into the closest kind of good comradeship 
because of the fewness of their numbers. The morn- 
ings and nights of February were cold and desolate 
and the chill crept down by thrills, and settled in the 
warm woollen socks knitted by loving hands. 

In the barracks, these boys had a stove, and around 
it in the evenings they gathered and discussed all 
things in and out of the universe and usually broke 
up in a row. In the morning, they found themselves 
ranged in their usual places around the stove and new 
subjects and new contestants were ready to enter the 
field. 

The boys were organized and called themselves 
"The Stove League." They had a President, Dono- 
van, and a General Supervisor, Crux, and when I 
stumbled in upon them and was welcomed as one 
from home, they were all at a standstill over the inter- 
pretation of the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Reve- 
lation. Crux had insisted and argued for weeks that 
the Book of Revelation clearly outlined the progress 
of the great war, identified the Beast in the Kaiser, 
and determined that the war would end in forty-two 
months as foretold in the fifth verse. The forty-two 
months would be up on the 26th of February, and now 
the day was the 28th, and prophecy and the Bible 
had both fallen to the ground. It was like coming 
into a sort of Prophetic Conference. 

I would give much to have a photograph of that 
group at headquarters that night. The boys sat on 
beds, on the floor, on chunks of wood, on boxes, but 



34 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

all around the stove, and taps sounded before the Bible 
class broke up. 

I told them that the Book of Revelation was written 
for days like these, and that in those days power was 
in the hands of tyranny. The tyrant's name was 
Caesar and the modern spelling is Kaiser. I told them 
that the book was written in a peculiar symbolic lan- 
guage, so that those who understood would know and 
those who did not possess the key would pass it by 
as meaningless. I told them that it contained only 
one message and that was to the effect that however 
sore the trial, and however hot the fire of persecution, 
even though death should result, yet faith was bound 
to triumph and God would have the last word. Then 
we saw that the message of the book was timeless 
and had little to do with dates and names and num- 
bers, but had everything to do with comfort and hope 
and courage, for through the ruin and the desolation, 
we see a new heaven and a new earth. We instinc- 
tively felt that we were not alone in the experience of 
disaster and war's desolation and that they who sang 
their new song in the Book of Revelation would not 
sing alone, for we too would join in the chorus, "Halle- 
lujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." 

The majority of the men of the American Army 
are not in barracks, but in billets. They are billeted 
in the villages and towns of France. The army au- 
thorities, assisted by the French Government, set apart 
an area covering perhaps a dozen or more French vil- 
lages, and in that area, perhaps ten or twenty miles 
across, a whole army division of 26,000 men will be 



BARRACKS AND BILLETS 35 

billeted. This necessitates the breaking up of the 
division into separate units, ranging from a few hun- 
dred to two or three thousand men. Before the 
soldiers arrive, billeting officers make a thorough 
canvass of the situation and every available space is 
secured and the number of men assigned to each 
barn, shed, public hall, courtyard, and home is defi- 
nitely determined. 

It is not difficult to understand how monotony 
creeps into the life of our men so situated. They do 
not know the French language, there are no pastimes, 
no libraries, no movies, no newspapers, and except 
for the service of the "Y" no provision is made for 
recreation and amusement. The men of France be- 
tween eighteen and fifty have all gone to war and 
only the women, the children, and men unfit for mili- 
tary duty are left. The work of the Army and of the 
Y M C A becomes in circumstances such as these both 
more necessary and more difficult. 

The Army has accomplished marvelous things and 
the sanitary conditions of our American camps in 
France are as perfect as American science can make 
them. France has been both surprised and charmed 
at the dispatch with which villages and whole sections 
of territory have been made fitter places to live in. 
A French Protestant clergyman, Pastor R. Saillens, 
expressed to me the conviction that the American 
Army had in a few days been able to cleanse and 
purify the life of French communities where for a 
generation the French Government had only imper- 
fectly succeeded. 



36 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

Thousands of soldiers live on trains. They travel 
from port to camp, and from camp to camp. They 
eat and sleep during the days they are en route in the 
railroad cars which are designated to hold eight horses 
or forty men. It takes as much heroism on a frosty 
morning to wash with water from a cold canteen 
water bottle as it does to go over the top in December 
weather. We saw boys pouring water into the hands 
of other lads while they held their heads out of the 
car door. We said, "Where are you going?" "To 

h ," came the quick and hearty response. We got 

even by asking, "How would you like some buttered 
toast and coffee?" They came back with the chal- 
lenge, "Do you want to get shot?" 

Good cheer is welcome, but when it is accompanied 
with good chocolate it is better. When those boys 
landed at their destination a few hours later they 
found that the "Y" had preceded them and was ready 
with steaming caldrons of hot chocolate to satisfy 
their physical and social need. Their greeting, "Gee, 
here's the old 'Y' " is high commendation from the 
Army. 

There are always thousands of men and officers who 
are temporarily located in Paris, in port cities, and in 
headquarters' centers. For these men the Y M C A 
has, with wise foresight, provided hotels and club 
rooms for officers and privates. The eleven hotels 
managed by the "Y" for the use of American soldiers 
and sailors have fully justified themselves under the 
wise oversight of Frederic B. Shipp. They practically 
carry themselves financially, and their popularity is 



BARRACKS AND BILLETS 37 

evidenced by the fact that rooms are engaged by 
officers weeks in advance. 

In these officers' hotels and clubs, we found library 
and canteen facilities, with music and a wholesome 
homelike American atmosphere. In these centers 
American women are helping as Y M C A Secretaries, 
and their presence has added both charm and cheer 
to thousands of our men. These hotels and clubs are 
under army regulations and are provided with army 
fare. This means not restriction but liberty, for in 
Paris they are the only places where our men can 
secure white bread, butter, sugar, and the little deli- 
cacies that American men like. The service carried 
on for the officers in hut and club and hotel is perhaps 
the most appreciated of all the activities for which 
the Y M C A has made itself responsible. 

Like the martyrs of old, our men live also in "dens 
and caves of the earth." In trench and dugout, in 
caves along the road and in the hills, in shelves along 
the side of the trench, sleeping behind damp gas- 
sheltering canvas, they live their lives and win their 
victories. 

One dark night with the shells screaming over us 
and the star-shells lighting up "No Man's Land," 
we asked the boys what they wanted. They said, 
"Bread and candles." War brings us to the simplici- 
ties and what else do men require but "bread" and 
"light"? 

I asked a man who was cleaning his rifle the name 
of the little village where he and his comrades were 
billeted. He answered with a surprised look, "Blamed 



38 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

if I know. I've only been in this crazy place for five 
days." Tomorrow he was gone to find quarters in an- 
other village. 

Ours is a mobile army. In sixty days one of our 
army divisions of 26,000 men was encamped in five 
different places 150 miles apart. No wonder mail 
addressed to P. O. 709 was delayed. 

One of our camp areas covers a territory 250 by 
150 miles. The YMCA, following the advice of 
the army authorities, projected thirteen huts in one 
section of that area, to find after the work was com- 
pleted that the army plans had been suddenly changed. 
Such experiences, however, belong to the fortunes 
of war. 

The road that leads into the city of Verdun is called 
"The Holy Road/' It is not a long road. It winds 
over hills and along valleys from Bar le Due to Ver- 
dun. When the Crown Prince massed his twenty 
army divisions against the French, he destroyed the 
main line of communication leading into the city. 
The evidence of that reign of terror is everywhere 
evident. A French officer pointed out a bridge a few 
miles behind the city, near which a German shell fell 
every fifteen seconds for days at a time, and yet 
amid ruin and desolation the bridge was not destroyed. 

Not far from Verdun, in a cemetery that seemed no 
larger than the ground covered by an ordinary church 
building, 5,000 French soldiers lay buried. It had 
looked as if Verdun would fall, for the only railroad 
that led into the city was a narrow road over which 
it took me almost five hours to travel thirty-five miles. 



BARRACKS AND BILLETS 39 

Into the city, however, ran a splendid highway, and 
over the road the reserves of France traveled. Every 
day for three months 12,000 trucks went forward, 
loaded with men and ammunition and food, and every 
day for three months 12,000 trucks returned, loaded 
with wounded or wearied men. If a truck failed to 
move, it was quickly cast aside and the great, grey 
endless procession moved on. Over that highway 
more men went forward never to return, than over 
any other road in the world's history. This is why 
the French people speak of it today in hushed voices 
as "The Holy Road." 

Every road in France and every road that leads 
to France is a holy road. Most of our boys that 
travel over those highways with songs of rejoicing, 
will come back to us again. Some will never come 
back, but all of them must know that with them we, 
too, have traveled. 

We can do this by furnishing and equipping the 
army agencies which follow them right up to the very 
front. The Red Cross and the Y M C A are out upon 
these holy roads and must be furnished and equipped 
with men and women, for they, too, claim the right 
to the road. 

We do not dare to send our Army and our Navy 
out into danger without following them to the vic- 
torious end, and for the welfare service thousands 
of men and women are needed. They are needed to 
relieve the strain upon the workers — all too few — who 
are now in France. They are needed to fill gaps 
caused by death, for the Red Triangle and the Red 



4 o PORT TO LISTENING POST 

Cross have no place in their ranks for the pacifist or 
the slacker. Many workers are in France for limited 
terms of service and their places must be filled. Men 
and women who can find no place in the ranks of the 
military must go, in order to keep faith with them- 
selves and to live on good terms with themselves after 
the war is past. 

It is to this challenge that Rudyard Kipling refers in 
his verses, "The American Spirit Speaks" : 

"But after the fires and the wrath, 
But after searching and pain, 
His Mercy opens us a path 
To live with ourselves again." 



CHAPTER IV 
PLAYING THE GAME 

Every man who enters one of the British Y M C A 
huts comes face to face with the words : 
"Live clean." 
"Talk clean." 
"Fight clean." 
"Play the game." 
For four years the British Tommy has fought clean 
and played the game. 

The motto appeals to our American boys. They 
have come at a rather late hour upon the battle field 
of France, but they have come determined to live clean, 
to talk clean, to fight clean, and to play the game. 

The American soldier in France has long ceased to 
be a novelty. The nations that mingle in France have 
become accustomed to the uniform of the United 
States soldier. People are still tremendously interested 
in him. Little children' gather around him and are 
proud to be spoken to. French soldiers are always 
eager to welcome and converse with him and every- 
where he has been given the right of way in France. 

But the thrill is over, the thrill of those first days. 
A young lad from Alabama told me of the stirring 
days when they marched through the streets of Paris. 
Those days can never be repeated, and now troops land 

41 



42 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

as if they were arriving at one of our own American 
ports. This same lad from Alabama had driven a 
motorcycle from the port of entry to headquarters. 
He passed through a French town where a man in a 
silk hat waved at him and afterwards followed him 
to the next town on a bicycle. The man with the silk 
hat was the Mayor of the village through which the 
American soldier had passed without ceremony. The 
soldier was taken back to the Mayor's town; received 
by the Mayor's family; entertained at dinner, and 
when he returned to his motorcycle he found that the 
children of the village had filled the side seat of his 
motorcycle with French flowers. Those days are 
gone. Today American soldiers are everywhere. They 
are in the port cities ; along the highways ; in little 
villages; on the Swiss border; in the valleys of the 
French Alps ; along the shores of the English Channel, 
and in the words of General Pershing: 

''Others will come as numerous as may be needed." 
How distinguished they look! It is not the uni- 
form that distinguishes them, for in some respects the 
American uniform is less attractive than the uniform 
of other nations. It lacks the touch of beauty and 
personality of the French and it lacks the comfort of 
the British and the dash of the Colonial. It is their 
straightness, their strength, their manliness, that dis- 
tinguishes them. An English officer who had watched 
them enter France said to me that they looked just 
as the Canadians looked four years ago, fresh and 
vigorous and forward-looking. There was a touch of 
pathos in his voice as he thought of the hardships 



PLAYING THE GAME 43 

through which the Canadians had come before the 
freshness of youth had been changed into the rugged- 
ness of experience. 

The thing that impressed me about the American 
soldier was his abounding vitality. He was always do- 
ing something and planning something. He was al- 
ways on the move. Whatever his work, he was always 
chafing under restraint. His first question was, "How 
near are we to the front?" After he has been in 
France for a month or six weeks he will say to you 
in an apologetic tone, "It isn't my fault that I am not 
under shell fire." 

A young Lieutenant who speaks excellent French, 
and for that reason has been attached to the General 
Staff, told me that he lay awake every night trying 
to scheme out some way by which he could get up 
under the sound of the guns. Even the men and 
women of the Y M C A grow restless in the necessary 
service of the rear and demand to be sent into the 
danger zone. 

When the French turned over the Lorraine front 
to our boys, things had been quiet along the line for 
months. I was told the Germans felt free to walk at 
ease in No Man's Land and that no shots were fired 
between the contending forces. They were content to 
hold the trenches awaiting developments elsewhere. 
Our boys went into the trenches in the night. Next 
morning the Hun went out for his usual walk on the 
parapet and received a baptism of fire. Since then 
there has always been something doing. The French 
were disturbed at first and thought the Americans had 



44 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

spoiled everything, and had stirred up for themselves, 
and for them, a hornet's nest. But the Germans have 
had to strengthen their lines there and have been 
given no peace day nor night. 

If the boys are not in actual warfare, they are up to 
American pranks. They load a piece of wire with a 
weight of iron and then in the night one of the boys 
slips out into No Man's Land and throws the heavy 
end over the German wire entanglements and goes 
back to the trench. Then they pull, and the grinding, 
scraping noise of the wire causes "Fritz" to throw up 
star-shells to see where the enemy is and what is going 
on in his entanglements. The colored men have the 
same spirit. They were in the front line, brigaded with 
French troops, in the hills, and in the swamp pro- 
tected by a maze of trenches and a maze of wire. 
Harry Lauder asked one of the English Tommies 
how long the war would last. "Forty years," he said. 
Astonished at the answer, he asked the reason for his 
pessimism. "Oh," said Tommy, "it will take a 
year to finish the war and then it will take thirty-nine 
years to wind up the wire." He was thinking of 
those miles and miles and miles of barbed wire en- 
tanglements. 

One night the Captain of a colored company asked 
for six volunteers from his colored troops to re- 
connoiter in No Man's Land ; instead of six, every man 
in the company stepped forth for duty. "Tell the 
Hun," said one of the colored men, "that the black 
man has come and the German has got to leave." 
Speaking in the tent one night one of the Y M C A 



PLAYING THE GAME 45 

Secretaries was saying that that very night — it was the 
crisis of the first German drive — hundreds of British 
and French soldiers were dying on the battlefield and 
he hoped thousands of Germans. He sort of hedged 
when he made that statement and went back over it 
to explain just what he meant, but one of the men in 
the audience cried out, "Oh, never mind, that is what 
we are here for, to kill the Hun." They don't ask you 
over there how long the war will last. Our boys in 
France are saying, "I hope the war will not end until 
I get a chance at the front." That is the spirit of the 
American soldier and though at times the thought of 
home pulls hard, he does not intend to come back until 
he comes with bands playing and banners waving. 

These men of ours have not wasted their youth. 
They have had their youth, and now in these days of 
testing they stand the strain. They contrast favorably 
with the men of other nations. They are more viva- 
cious, they laugh more, they play more. The little 
children of France fall in love with them and like their 
fun and merriment. They walk with them on the 
street, hand in hand, and are instinctively drawn to 
them. Kipling once, thinking about the youth of his 
nation, wrote : 

"The Lamp of our Youth will be utterly out : 
But we shall subsist on the smell of it." 

One has only to look at a regiment of American sol- 
diers to understand that the lamp of youth has never 
gone out, and that the ardor and strength of young 
manhood is strong upon our men, and, because of their 



46 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

past well-living and well-doing they have a reserve 
strength to fall back upon. 

The fine spirit that possesses our men comes down 
to them in a manner from the officers. Our men are 
well officered. The message of General Pershing to 
our American men hangs in all our Y M C A buildings 
in France. 

"TO THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

Hardship will be your lot, but trust in God will give 
you comfort. Temptation will befall you, but the 
teachings of our Saviour will give you strength. Let 
your valor as a soldier and your conduct as a man be 
an inspiration to your comrades and an honor to your 
country. —Pershing." 

When the first American troops entered France, 
General Pershing welcomed them in these words: 

"You are now in France, to expel an enemy that has 
invaded this beautiful land. Your first duty is to fight 
against this foe, and protect our Ally. You are here 
also to lift a shield above the poor and weak. You 
will be kind, therefore, to the aged and the invalid. 
You will be courteous to all women, and never have 
so much as an evil thought in your mind. You will 
be very tender and gentle with little children. You 
will do well, therefore, to forswear the use of all 
liquors. You will do your duty like brave men. Fear 
God. God have you in his keeping." 

Compare this with the Kaiser's charge to his soldiers 
about to sail for China in 1900: 

"When you meet the foe you will defeat him. No 
quarter will be given, no prisoners will be taken. Let 



PLAYING THE GAME 47 

all who fall into your hands be at your mercy. Just 
as the Huns one thousand years ago under Attila 
gained reputation, so may the name of Germany be- 
come known in such a manner in China that no China- 
man will ever again dare to look askance at a Ger- 
man." 

In an obscure corner of France where a regiment 
of our soldiers was stationed, I found a copy of an 
order posted for Company M, of the 161 st Infantry. 
Here it is : 

"Sunday being a day of rest and meditation, when 
every American can worship God according to the 
dictates of his own conscience, a portion of the day 
cannot be spent in a more reverent manner than by 
writing a letter home to your mother, or, if she is not 
living, then to your next of kin. 

"Remember that your mother is the one who is 
brave, not you. She is the one who is carrying the 
cross. You are uppermost in her thoughts all the 
time and she is praying for your safe return. Gladden 
her heart by writing to her regularly. 

"David Livingstone, 

"Captain 161 st Infantry." 

This fine spirit possessed by the officers is reflected 
in the men. There are officers in the American Army 
who are acting as real chaplains to their men. One 
of the officers, a Colonel with whom we were lunching, 
and at whose table the officers bowed their heads while 
prayer was offered for the camp and for the men, 
handed us these verses which had been written by one 
of his own men, a private in the Quartermaster's De- 



48 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

partment, and which he carried around with him, 
apparently prouder of them than if he had written 
them himself. 

"He swore his oath as a soldier should 

With eyes steadfast and loyal : 
He sold his hopes of a life of ease, 

For a soldier's lonely toil. 
He said goodbye to the girl at home, 

And left her proud and sad ; 
And went away to play his part, 

In a world gone stark mad. 

"Oh, never were hopes as high as his 

Or never were aims so dear: 
The trenches had no horrors for him 

And hungry guns no fear. 
But he did not know that the risks of war 

Are not confined to the line, 
And he fell for a pair of painted cheeks 

And a belly of vixen wine. 

"He couldn't see that the harm he did 

Was not to himself alone, 
And he bartered the best of his life away 

Like a dog for a poisoned bone. 
He didn't go to the trenches, 

For he bore the marks of Eve, 
But they sent him home with a Medical D.D. 

For his friends to see and grieve. 

"Did he go back to the girl he left behind ? 
Does a burnt cur slink to the fire? 
No ! he dropped from the ken of decent men 
To the depths of souls for hire. 



PLAYING THE GAME 49 

So this is the law of the God of war, 

Ye men who have heard the call, 
The Hun is bad, but a painted face 

Is the wickedest foe of all." 



The alertness and vitality of the men in the Army 
is the reflection of the soul of the American nation. 
As the nation goes, so goes the Army. The Army is 
the apex of the pyramid which rests upon the great 
enduring foundation of the nation. The Army is the 
keen cutting edge of the wedge whose driving power 
comes from the bulk of the nation's strength. The 
Army can never be beaten so long as the nation is 
strong. This war has become a spiritual and a moral 
struggle. If the men at the front are to play the game, 
it is necessary that the men and women at home learn 
to play the game also. Not until Germany destroyed 
the soul of Russia did she win a victory over Russian 
armies. I saw Italian soldiers working on the roads 
in France — soldiers that had been pushed back by the 
great German drive, but not until the soul of the 
Italian people had been weakened by German propa- 
ganda did the Hun set foot on Italian soil. When 
the political life of France was weak and uncertain, 
the French armies wavered and the Somme offensive 
broke down. When the great smash of the German 
spring drive came against the armies of Britain more 
British soldiers fell in a single week than had ever 
fallen during a similar period at any time in her great 
history. And it was only because the heart of the 
nation was sound that the Army stood like a wall of 



50 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

steel against the enemy. As long as the nation is true, 
the Army will never fail. 

The men who represent us in France will play the 
game, but they cannot play it without us. If the 
nation at home is weak, the Army will be weak. If 
the nation is hesitant, the Army will be hesitant, but 
if the nation is self-reliant and strong and victorious, 
the Army will be strong, defiant of death, and tri- 
umphant. It is because the soul of the American 
nation is true and strong and victorious that it will not 
tolerate any form of political profiteering while the 
war is on. 

A young lad of the Navy just in from sea said to 
me, "War is a mighty strange thing and America is 
going to gain just what Germany wanted to gain." 
He had thought things out for himself and he had 
come to the conclusion that in commerce and trade, 
and in the markets of the world, America had found 
her place among the nations. And then he said, "Of 
course it's mighty fortunate that we will be the victors 
and not Germany." And in the back of his mind I 
knew what he was thinking about. He was thinking 
of the victory not only of armies but of ideas, not of 
the sword only but also of the spirit. 

The American soldier is his own best interpreter. 
Here is a letter from one of them: 

"April 22nd, 1918. 

Dearest : 

Was delighted about Roy and wish him the best of 
luck with my sincerest congratulations. Am proud of 
him and I know you will always be from now on. It 



PLAYING THE GAME 51 

doesn't matter so much what the service is, but there's 
a niche for every man in this stunt, and he ought to 
fill it when he can be relieved of domestic obligations, 
as in Roy's case. Then besides, wouldn't the poor 
devil have an awful time trying to explain to pos- 
terity that his wife wouldn't let him serve his country ? 
Parental love is ruthlessly disregarded and magnifi- 
cently submerged in the patriotism of this great event, 
so why should not marital happiness take a back seat 
for a time being? Change the T to make it 'martial,' 
and you will find that selfishness will give place to 
service and self-sacrifice, and thereby you will breathe 
deeper, for your spirit will be liberated and your soul 
will go on a regular spree. Take that from me, for 
I'm 'Jake' and I know. 'Jake' means 'just right' in 
the army, and our up-to-date Y M C A pastor gave 
the men a sermon last night on the text: 'Are you 
Jake ?' which means, 'Are you at peace with yourself ?' 
and I have found out that I am. Strangely enough, 
too, I never really understood that feeling before, nor 
do I know why I have come by it recently. I used 
to be a little bit worried now and then about getting 
through it all, and often wished I could be back home 
with you all once more. 

You see the whole big idea spells SERVICE. I 
never knew the full meaning of that word before and 
the glorious feeling of standing ready to give every- 
thing and ask nothing in return — not blind, but un- 
questioning service to our country, to humanity, and 
to God. That isn't meant as oratory, either, for I 
know that a thousand like myself would scarcely cause 
a ripple on this sea, but the biggest sacrifice that any 
one could make wouldn't be too much to ask with a 
beast overrunning the world, would it? We Ameri- 
cans are a great and glorious people, and, thank God, 
we are finding ourselves. 

Don't worry about me at all. The Boche has had 



52 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

three or four awfully good chances to get me, and he 
hasn't yet. Besides, the American troops will be pull- 
ing a lot of spectacular stuff from now on, I imagine, 
and, if every time you hear of their being in a bit of 
a smash, you imagine that I am in it, you will just be 
overwhelming yourself with a lot of unnecessary 
worries. 

I've got a dandy chance of getting through it all, 
perhaps without a scratch, and even if I don't, I'm 
Jake — See ! 

Fondly, 

Henry." 

One day in France I stood in a cathedral back of 
the fighting line. Its windows had been shattered by 
shells and the beautiful building was open to rain and 
sun. I was alone and waited in the silence of the 
great building for a moment of quiet. While I was 
waiting a soldier entered, a soldier in blue, a young 
man not yet twenty-five. He took a seat near the 
front and worshiped with bowed head. A moment 
after a woman, veiled and in deep mourning, took her 
place near the rear, and, she too, bowed in worshiping 
silence. What a picture it made — a cathedral, shat- 
tered by the shells of war — a woman with a sur- 
rendered past, with love and hope lying buried in a 
trench grave where her boy lay sleeping — and then, 
beside her in the House of God, youth consecrating 
itself to the hopes and dreams of tomorrow! It is 
only when we stand in the presence of the eternal that 
dreams take the form of reality even in the midst of 
the tragedy of war. We see in the night and in the 
darkness the flash of the sword of victory. 



PLAYING THE GAME 53 

'Dreamer of dreams? We take the taunt with glad- 
ness, 
Knowing that God, beyond the years you see, 
Has wrought the dreams that count with you for 
madness 
Into the substance of the world to be." 



CHAPTER V 
THE HEART OF THE CAMP 

The heart of the camp is a hut. The hut is head- 
quarters for the men of the Army. Millions of men 
pass through the door of the Y M C A hut to the front 
line trenches. The hut is part of the equipment for 
war. It is a war measure. It is in France to help 
win the war. Napoleon said, "Morale is to other 
features in war as three to one," and the Y M C A is 
in France to help the American Army reach the high- 
est point of efficiency. 

The sign of the Red Triangle has become part of 
the scenery of France. To Frenchmen the triangle 
is the sign of the Masonic Order, but the Red Triangle 
with the letters Y M C A speaks a unique language 
and proclaims the message of Christianity. The Tri- 
angle represents the application of religion to the 
whole man — body, mind, and spirit. 

The representatives of the Association during a 
recent visit to Italy found the King, Victor Emmanuel, 
established near the front in a small and plainly fur- 
nished soldier's barracks. After the polite Italian 
presentation the King asked the significance of the 
Red Triangle on the sleeve of the Y M C A uniform. 
Dr. John R. Mott took time to explain. 

"This side of the Triangle," he said, "represents 

54 



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THE HEART OF THE CAMP 55 

the body. We try to minister to the health of the 
soldiers. We believe that a sound, healthy physique 
makes for military efficiency and so our athletic de- 
partment initiates games and sports and out-of-door 
exercises." 

"This side of the Triangle," he continued, "repre- 
sents the mind. Men cannot live by bread alone and 
the 'Y' seeks to feed the mind by furnishing the men 
with libraries, lectures, magazines, and inspirational 
addresses. The Triangle also speaks of the things of 
the spirit. The Y M C A serves in the name of Him 
who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, 
and to give His life a ransom for many." 

This gave Dr. Mott an opportunity to point out 
that the entire work of the Association was motived 
by the Gospel and that this was the way the Chris- 
tian churches of America were relating themselves to 
the men of the Army. 

The King was interested, and Dr. Mott was grate- 
ful for his opportunity. 

The first hut in France was a tent. It was donated 
by the women of the "Twentieth Century Club" of 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Association has now 
nearly 900 centers with our American Army in France, 
and 600 points of contact with the French Army. The 
huts in the French Army are built and equipped by 
the French Government and are manned by a French 
Director and an American Secretary. The French 
huts are called Foyer du Soldats. The American hut 
may be an abri tent which will take care of a hundred 
or two hundred men; it may be a school house or a 



56 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

hall or the Hotel de Ville obtained from a French 
village where the troops are billeted; it may be a 
dugout or a cellar in a destroyed and abandoned town 
near the front, or it may be the standard single or 
double frame hut erected for the purpose. 

In each standard hut there is an audience room 
used for lectures and moving picture exhibitions at 
night, for writing and reading room during the day, 
for church on Sunday. At one end is a platform with 
a piano and a victrola and with a table or desk for a 
pulpit. The allied flags are draped behind the plat- 
form and on the walls American Liberty Loan and 
French government posters give a touch of beauty 
to the interior. At the end opposite the platform is 
the canteen, where the men can secure the little things 
all soldiers need. Around the walls near the windows 
or in the center of the room are benches and tables 
with ink and pens. Letter paper is furnished free at 
the counter. Behind the canteen may be two or more 
rooms used by the Secretaries for bedrooms or offices. 
If the hut is double, there is a second large audience 
room. It may be equipped as a lounge room, with a 
separate apartment for the officers, furnished with 
chairs, tables, books, magazines, and a fireplace. Both 
audience rooms can be thrown open and a packed 
house welcomes a distinguished guest, a French officer, 
a minstrel show, a boxing match, or a visiting clergy- 
man. 

In the beautifully appointed and tastefully fur- 
nished hut in one of the aviation camps a tablet tells 
of the love that made such provision for the boys. 



THE HEART OF THE CAMP 57 

The words of the tablet speak a message of splendid 

heroism : 

To THE 

Happy Memory 

of Pilot 

William Henry Meeker 

Corporal 

In the Foreign Legion 

This Y. M. C. A. Hut 

is Dedicated 

Died Sept. ii, 191 7 

Aged 23 

The hut is the heart of the camp. In the hut the 
boys meet their friends, write their letters, play their 
games, exchange photographs, read the current maga- 
zines, secure their copy of the Stars and Stripes, the 
Daily Mail, or the Paris edition of the New York 
Herald. In the hut they get their baseball and bat, 
basketball, boxing gloves, a cup of chocolate and a 
sandwich from one of the Y M C A women, an apple 
or an orange, dates and figs, cigarettes, and tooth 
paste. 

In one of the port cities of France five American 
lads, strangely dressed, were inquiring their way to 
the hut. They were neither in sailor costume nor 
soldier uniform. There was nothing to distinguish 
them. They came into the hut for a few cigarettes 
and a little chocolate. After their wants had been 
supplied, they sat down in a corner in quiet content. 
We watched them and wondered where they belonged, 
and then, after a few moments of friendly conversa- 
tion, they told their story. They had just come in 



58 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

from sea. Their boat had been torpedoed and they 
had been picked up by an English patrol boat. Their 
ship had sunk in less than five minutes and seven 
of a crew of thirty-eight had been drowned. One of 
the five had been torpedoed six times, twice in one 
day, and he told how in his dreams he had been three 
nights in the water, and yet he was all eager to return 
to the sea again. Instinctively they had sought the 
"Y," which ministered to their bodily comfort, and 
to them it was a haven of peace. 

No department store carries on more multiplied 
activities. The "Y" furnishes paper and envelopes, 
pens and ink. It gives a warm place by the fire, per- 
haps the only cosy spot in the camp. It cashes Army 
checks when banks refuse, and when the boys run 
out of money it takes their I. O. U. It supplies to- 
bacco, which seems to be the first requisite of the sol- 
dier and the sailor, and matches which seem to be the 
second requisite. I was told that at one time the "Y" 
had in its possession one-third of all the matches in 
France. Next to tobacco come New Testaments and 
chocolate, chewing gum and peanuts, oranges and 
apples, figs and dates, soap and candles, hymn books 
and crackers. 

The following statement by the War Council con- 
cerning shipments to France during the first year con- 
tains interesting information: 

"In addition to the enormous quantities of cigars, 
cigarettes, and canned fruit sent to France, the con- 
stantly expanding needs of the American Overseas 
forces had dictated up to March 31, the shipment by 



THE HEART OF THE CAMP 59 

the Y M C A of 2,578 cases of biscuits, 230,724 
pounds of cocoa, 374,605 pounds of coffee, 446,208 
cans of condensed milk, 193,483 sacks of flour, and 
90 cases of coughdrops. In addition to shipping across 
331,446 pounds of chocolate, the YMCA takes the 
entire output of three factories in France, an average 
of 1,000 tons of bar-chocolate a month. 

Athletic goods by the ton were sent over, among 
the principal items being 1,271 cases of material, in- 
cluding baseballs, basket balls, indoor baseballs, boxing 
gloves, footballs, baseball gloves, masks, and pads, 
medicine balls, soccer balls, volley balls, playground 
balls, and punching bags. 

To provide soldiers with writing material for the 
letters home, the Y M C A in this period shipped 360,- 
000,000 sheets of writing paper and envelopes to 
France. The varying needs of the soldiers were re- 
flected in the shipments of 34,760 cans of jams, 3,295,- 
735 pounds of sugar, 274 chests of tea, 21,000 phono- 
graph records, 350 talking machines, 621,212 pounds 
of chewing tobacco, 643,040 pounds of smoking to- 
bacco, and 204,480 tubes of tooth paste. 

For the entertainment of the American boys in the 
war zone, the YMCA shipped approximately 1,000,- 
000 feet of motion picture film, as well as a full com- 
plement of projecting machines and motion picture 
accessories. In addition, the organization sent over 
thousands of blankets, scores of lighting plants, hun- 
dreds of thousands of razors and blades, as well as 
shaving soap, toilet soap, soda fountain syrup, auto- 
mobile tools, stereopticon slides and sundries, auto- 
mobile parts, and tires." 

In one shipment to France the following items ap- 
peared on the bill of lading: 4,000,000 letter heads 
and envelopes ; 144,000 pens and penholders ; 75 mov- 



60 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

ing picture machines ; 60 tons of chocolate ; 1 carload 
of condensed milk; 1 carload of canned "hot dogs"; 
125 talking machines with 6,000 records ; 55 tons of 
sugar; 75 tons of flour; 20 tons of soap; 10,000 song 
books ; 30,000 copies of Scripture. 

The "Y" has become one of the world's greatest 
business corporations. It is a corporation with a soul. 
The hut takes the place of church, club, store, but 
most of all, of home. 

When I was speaking one day to the Army from 
the text, "What is your life?" the boys were asked 
to fill in their own answer, and the first answer that 
came back was "Home." This is the word that counts 
for most in the Army. A piece of writing paper left 
on the desk in a hut with the words "My dear Mar- 
garet" is typical of the attitude of the Army. Millions 
of letters home testify to the value of the hut in the 
life of the soldier. I brought home from the front 
hundreds of messages for the friends and parents of 
the boys I met in France. Here are some of the ex- 
pressions scribbled upon scraps of paper, backs of 
envelopes, or on a page out of a boy's notebook. 

"I only want to tell you that I am perfectly well 
and I am thinking of you all at home, and wish many 
times that I was over there with you." 

"Father and Mother : Everything going all right." 

"Dear Mother and All : Just a line to let you know 
I'm well and send my love to all. Lovingly, your son." 

"Tell Mother I'm getting along fine." 

"Corporal George McG. sends love to his mother, 
also to Miss Helen." 



THE HEART OF THE CAMP 61 

"Will you kindly remember me to the girls of the 
Fifth Avenue Dormitory? I shall never forget your 
message ?" 

"Tell him you saw me. I was feeling fine and that 
I hope some day to see him again." 

"Tell her you saw me. I was feeling fine and 
through you send my love and best wishes." 

"Tell Mother I am sending this message with the 
Y M C A man. I am O. K. Your son." 

"Love to yourself and baby. All's well. I'm glad to 
be where I am. Love. Everything O. K." 

"Tell them I'm going good. From her son Archie." 

The last Sunday I was in France was Mother's Day. 
All over France the boys in the Army were celebrat- 
ing. American homes know that thousands of mes- 
sages came over the wire, and it is the "Y" that plans 
and makes all this possible. 

The Mother's Day program sent out to the boys in 
every hut contained this ideal mother's letter: 

"My dear Boy: 

Your father says to tell you that he will give his 
son to his country, but that he will be — (never mind 
what) if he will give all his new suspenders. He says 
you pinched three pairs from the top drawer of his 
bureau — he adds that he is onto your curves/ Nora 
says you were very wise to take them, and she would 
give you all of her's, if she had any. Betty says to 
tell you that she hears Jack Ellis sails next week — I 
know just how his mother will feel for those ten days 
while he is crossing. But she wouldn't have him stay 
at home, any more than I would have had you. All 



62 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

the same, she won't have a good night's sleep until she 
hears he has landed. I keep thinking what a different 
world it will be to mothers, when you all come march- 
ing home again. 

And when you do come marching home — old fellow, 
bring me back the same boy I gave my country, true 
and clean, and gentle, and brave. You must do this 
for your father and me and Betty and Nora — and 
most of all for the daughter you will give me one 
of these days. Dear, I don't know whether you have 
ever met her yet — but never mind that. Live for her, 
or if God wills, die for her — but do either with cour- 
age, with honor and clean mirth. But I know you 
will come back to me — 

Mother." 

Glimpses of the work carried on by the men and 
women in the service of the Y M C A may be ob- 
tained from the following letters. The first refers to 
one of many similar services performed by clergymen 
serving as "Y" Secretaries. 

"Office of the Attending Surgeon. 

U. S. T. P., P. O. 702, 

April 18, 1918. 
From: The Attending Surgeon. 
To: Chief Secretary, Y M C A, Paris. 
Subject: Rev. Mr. Benedict. 

1. On behalf of the Medical Department, U. S. 
Troops, Paris, it is desired to express our appreciation 
for the services rendered by the Rev. Mr. Benedict 
of the Y M C A in visiting a Lieutenant of the Army 
who was dying of smallpox in one of the French 
hospitals for contagious diseases. He was informed 
of the great danger of contracting this disease, but 
was not at all deterred from his duties. 



THE HEART OF THE CAMP 63 

2. Please accept our sincere thanks for the services 
rendered by Mr. Benedict in this case. 

Thomas C. Austin, 
Major, Medical Corps." 

Mr. Benedict stayed with the dying soldier for two 
hours until he passed out into the quiet and then com- 
municated his message of comfort and hope to the 
sorrowing parents in America. 

The second letter carries a message of Christmas 
cheer. 

"Hut No. 2, Base Camp, No. 1. 
Mr. E. C. Carter, December 28, 1917. 

Paris, 
My dear Mr. Carter: 

It was nearing midnight of Christmas Eve when 
we first inspected the contents of the three 'Santa 
Claus sacks' of presents sent us by the Paris office 
for distribution among the soldier-boys in our encamp- 
ment; we had just taken part in a real Christian 
Christmas service of prayer and song and carol and 
heart-to-heart talks about the man, Jesus Christ ; every 
man present became deeply, intensely and earnestly 
aware of Him as the Prince of Peace and Leader of 
Men in all things and at all times, and many have 
cheered our hearts by speaking to us individually of 
their feelings of comfort and hope, renewed and re- 
affirmed. But any weariness that we may have felt 
after giving of the very depths of our spiritual life, 
was forgotten in waves of amazement and pleasure 
that swept over us as we burrowed to the bottoms of 
those Christmas bags. But we did not then anticipate 
the joy and fun we were to have the next night when 
we distributed them at our Christmas tree. We could 
not retire until we had put up three big packages of 



64 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

the contents to send off with a company of 250 men 
who were leaving the camp and would be spending 
their Christmas in box cars. We added candy, ciga- 
rettes, cookies, and cigars for the officers, and then 
went to our cold cubicles at half after one to dream 
of the morrow, first setting the alarm at 5.30, that we 
might be sure to arise in time to deliver the packages 
before the boys left. We kept our engagement with 
Santa Claus all right and sent them off with the 
'Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the 
YMCA' and a 'bon ap petit' to aid in the enjoy- 
ment of the turkey dinner whose cold, well-roasted 
drumsticks were protruding from a barrel in the sup- 
ply camion. 

Our Christmas entertainment went off with a bang. 
There was a good crowd and we all enjoyed a good 
sing-song, with an excellent quartet and some old- 
fashioned carols and solos. Some Santas were 
equipped from the contents of the bags and we all 
took part in distributing the toys and whistles, paper- 
caps, etc., among the eager and joyously boisterous 
soldier-boys. What a tooting and a shrieking and a 
bedlam of fun ensued, lighted up by the sudden flares 
and fiery splutterings of the fake cigarettes or inter- 
rupted by the loud laughter when some lad opened a 
surprise box of matches, or by the explosions of the 
snappers. What curious capers the men cut in their 
gay headgear ! They were all boys once more, and we 
are almost sure that no family of lads in America 
had more fun than they when Santa came around. 
Barnum and Bailey's parade and brass bands had noth- 
ing on us when we all lined up and encircled the 
parade grounds in a grand march of Christmas joy. 
It seemed from the noise they made that the men 
wanted and expected the folks across the waters to 
hear and to take comfort from the fact that they 



THE HEART OF THE CAMP 65 

were actually happy on this night, even though they 
were in the far-off 'Somewhere in France/ The 
little tin fifes and rubber bagpipes and rattling drums 
played all the famous marches of the Allies in per- 
fect discord. The Officer of the Day rushed out, 
expecting to be swept off his feet by an invasion of 
the Hun hordes. As the line swung back into the 

Y M C A hut, in twos, they were served by the ladies 
to cups of hot chocolate, cigarettes, and cakes, and we 
gave them the Christmas Greeting cards of the 

Y M C A, with our own personal good wishes and an 
extra card or two to send home to their folks. 

We all feel that the party was a success; our hut 
was like a home to every man; there was no disorder 
of any kind, no jostling for hand-outs or anything of 
the sort, and at the hour of departure numbers of the 
boys came up to us and thanked us for one of the best 
Christmases they had ever enjoyed. Today there is 
a different spirit in the camp and a change of attitude 
towards the Y M C A. We did not forget the 
prisoners, white or colored, but gave them a treat the 
next night. We will not forget their gratitude or the 
speech of one of their number, who told us feelingly 
of their appreciation of our remembrance. 

We as workers want to thank the Paris office for 
the fact of being actually drawn nearer to the men 
than ever before, and for the feeling of real coopera- 
tion with the whole organization of the Y M C A as 
shown by this splendid sensing of the needs of the 
soldiers, and the actual meeting of those needs. 

Wishing you a happy New Year, we are, 

Very sincerely yours, 

W. D. Shipps. 
Roy A. Welker. 
D. H. Hoves, Jr." 



66 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

The hut may be at the front. It may be in a room 
of what is left of a house in a ruined village. It 
may be in a shell proof shelter near where the trench 
system begins and where already some of our workers 
have laid down their lives. 

One "Y" worker, a man past middle life, had been 
removed by the Army during a gas attack and had 
been taken to the hospital. For hours we had searched 
and finally discovered him in a French hospital, which 
was cleverly concealed in a forest by the side of the 
road. He was far past middle life and had insisted 
upon going to the most dangerous point on the Ameri- 
can line to man the Y M C A hut — a mere dugout built 
there for the boys in the trenches. 

They told us he had stood at his post when the 
attack was on and had been carried off unconscious. 
He greeted us with a cheery smile, but could only 
talk in a whisper. 

"Yes," he said, "It was the gas . . . got me . . . 
but I'm all right . . . now. I will soon ... be back 
... at my work . . . again. I hope . . . you can 
visit . . . the boys at the hut." 

That was a request that could not be denied, and 
after a friendly visit, we made our plans to go to the 
place where he had left his comrade to man the hut 
alone and to minister to the men in the trenches. We 
had to wait until the dark came down before we 
could reach the hut. The roads had all been photo- 
graphed and registered and danger lurked in every 
foot of that front line. 

When it grew dusk we started. The Ford camion- 



THE HEART OF THE CAMP 67 

ette was ready, and chocolate, cigarettes, matches, 
crackers, figs, candles, and a few knicknacks were 
stowed away for delivery. 

What a ride it was — over roads dark and shell-torn, 
past ammunition trucks working their way to the 
front through the long road-lane safeguarded by 
camouflage on every side and overhead, past trees 
torn by shrapnel, and through destroyed and desolate 
villages, over hills gutted by shells with abri-shelters 
here and there in the rocks and soldiers standing 
sentry. There among the wooded hills the masked 
batteries spoke their tragic message. At last we came 
to the end. The road went no further. The highway 
ran right into the "Y" dugout on the hillside. 

A group of soldiers stood at the door of the hut 
waiting for the supplies we had brought. Their wel- 
come was heard before we arrived. "Here comes the 
old 'YV they shouted. I noticed one of the men 
standing apart from the rest, with his helmet split up 
the back. My companion said, "How in thunder did 
you do that?" "Shrapnel," he said, and turned away 
to break off a piece of chocolate. He was muddy, 
discouraged, and dispirited. While the canteen sup- 
plies were being taken off, and the shells went shriek- 
ing and crying over our heads, he told me what had 
happened. 

"I've had about all I want," he said. "When the 
Boches turned their barrage on us, some of the fellows 
couldn't stand it and were ready to run, but there was 
no place to run to, so we stood up to it. It was our 
first experience under fire. Yes, one of my pals was 



68 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

killed at my side and some were wounded, and when 
the gas came over, others were caught. When the 
shrapnel struck my helmet, I said, 'That's your num- 
ber/ and when I looked, I saw a piece of hot iron 
at my feet, and here's my cap to show for it." He was 
silent for awhile and his thoughts were far away. 
Then he said, "Why do you fellows come out here? 
God knows what we would do without you. But I 
can't see through your game. The 'Y' is like father 
and mother to us, but you don't have to come. None 
of you belong to the draft age. The man that drives 
that Ford out here every night is nearly sixty years 
old. Why do you come ?" he said. "You don't have to." 

It had never been put up to me just like that and 
I couldn't answer. Metcalf, who had driven the car, 
is a college professor. His exact age is fifty-seven, 
and no one could ever charge him with being a slacker, 
and no one would ever dare to ask him why he was 
there. 

Only one "Y" man was in the dugout and for awhile 
we talked together about the fighting and then of 
home. He belonged to the same place back home as 
I did, and we talked of the people we knew and of 
the big city. He plucked a few flowers from the hill- 
side and wrapping them in a piece of newspaper 
asked if I would deliver them back home to the one 
he loved. Searching for an answer to my hero's ques- 
tion, I said, 

"Why did you come out here ?" 

He looked at me as if I had said something foolish. 

"Because I couldn't stay at home," he said. 



THE HEART OF THE CAMP 69 

"How long are you going to stay?" 

His answer came quick and sure : 

"Till the war is ended right and a year after." 

When I saw my friend with the smashed helmet 
he had had a cup of hot chocolate and a few 
figs and was feeling like a fighting man again. The 
"Y" had performed the ministry it came out to do, 
and that elusive thing officers call "morale" had been 
again established. He was ready to go back in the 
morning and avenge himself and his country for his 
lost pal. 

"I know why you fellows are here," he said. "You 
are here because we are here." He was right. The 
"Y" men had come with the American Army to win 
the war. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE WORLD IN FRANCE 

The world is in France. To France in our day, as 
to Jerusalem in days gone by, the tribes of the world 
go up. 

We thought the world was in America. We have 
been accustomed to speak of America as the melting 
pot of the world. From every nation under heaven, 
people have come to America to be molded into democ- 
racy's ideal citizenship. Today, however, France is 
the melting pot of the world. In France we discover 
the new internationalism. While men discuss "The 
League to Enforce Peace," some such league has 
gathered on the shores of France. Every nation that 
loves liberty and raises the standard of freedom is 
represented today in France. 

The ship upon which we traveled to France spoke 
of this new internationalism. The passenger list in- 
cluded people from all ranks and from all nations. 
We had on board a group of American marines pre- 
pared for naval aviation in France. There were fifty 
Y M C A Secretaries equipped for service in the 
American, French, and Italian armies. There were 
twelve Y W C A women going for service in French 
munition plants and with American telephone girls. 
We had with us twenty-five men of the Red Cross who 

70 



THE WORLD IN FRANCE 71 

were to see service on the battle front and to report 
their findings to the American people. There were 
twelve women doctors, ready for surgical service in 
the hospitals of France. Dr. Alexis Carrel, the 
eminent French surgeon who has done so much to 
alleviate the suffering of war's wounded and shat- 
tered humanity, was returning to his ministry of mercy 
on the battle front. Men high in the ranks of world 
diplomacy were there — the "French High Commis- 
sion" returning from its visit to America; the Amer- 
ican minister to Switzerland going back to his post; 
the Serbian ambassador to France returning from his 
official mission to America; and the representative of 
the American Embassy to France. 

Men distinguished in military science were there — 
among them Major Requin, who had carried General 
Foch's message to the French Division which struck 
the victorious blow in the Battle of the Marne. There 
were educators and entertainers going forward for 
service with our troops and with the soldiers of 
France — among others Madame Giles of the French 
Opera, Elsie Janis of the American stage, and Ella 
Wheeler Wilcox, who told how her study of world 
religions had resulted in the familiar verse: 

"So many gods, so many creeds, 

So many paths that wind and wind, 
And just the art of being kind 
Is all this old world needs." 

The mingling of the nations in France has given 
a new France, a France that is no longer pleasure- 



72 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

loving nor fashion-following, but a France that is 
serious, war-scarred, heroic, and defiant; a France 
that during four years of war has by her men in blue 
held 304 out of the 400 miles which make up the 
western front. It is France represented by her women 
in black who cry through sorrow and sacrifice, "Vive 
la France!' It is France whose Army proclaims 
against all the forces of iniquity the triumphant 
watchword: "They shall not pass." 

Into the motherland of France have come all the 
children of France. The colonies of France are there 
— Senegal, Madagascar, Tunis, Algeria. The France 
of Europe and the France of Africa are there, united 
and victorious. To one of the French colored men 
from North Africa one of our colored soldiers from 
the Southland made overtures of friendship, but was 
greeted in the French language, which conveyed no 
meaning to the soldier from America. His confusion 
found expression in the words, "For the Lord's sake, 
here's a nigger who don't know his own language." 

Belgium is there in the person of her Army, her 
orphaned children, and her refugees. The Belgian 
Army tenaciously clings to a little strip of land fifteen 
miles from the French frontier, her government exiled, 
her heroic King and Queen living under the sound of 
the guns, everything gone but honor, the blood of her 
martyrs crying unto the nations for vengeance by 
night and by day. 

Great Britain is there. She is there and on four- 
teen other fronts. She has driven Germany from her 
colonies and closed the gates of the sea upon her com- 



THE WORLD IN FRANCE 73 

merce. She is there with her great Army. Her ''con- 
temptible army" of 160,000 has grown into millions. 
In two years she put 5,000,000 volunteers into France. 
Her casualty list for 191 7 was 800,000. Her casu- 
alty list for the month of May was 40,000 a week. She 
has raised the age of enlistment to fifty, and, while 
her Navy guards the high seas and makes possible 
the transport of our troops to France, she defies the 
power of Germany in the west. Scotland is there. 
Out of a population of 5,000,000 Scotland has sent to 
the colors 1,000,000 men. It is perhaps the greatest 
record in history, and, so efficient has been that army 
that Harry Lauder, loved and honored among men, 
has humorously said that if all the Army had been 
in kilts, the war would have been over long since. 
The people of Ireland and of Wales are there. Conan 
Doyle gives high praise to the Welsh, and all the 
world knows that the first Victoria Cross granted in 
this war was won by an Irishman. 

With all her children, Britain is there. Canada is 
there. For nearly three years Canada has represented 
the spirit of the western world on the battle field. 
So truly has the pulse of Canada beat in harmony 
with the best spirit of the United States that the call 
which brought 400,000 Canadians to the colors brought 
30,000 Americans across the line into that same Ca- 
nadian Army. One out of sixteen of the population in 
Canada has entered the service and 41,000 have laid 
down their lives on the battle field in France. 

Australia is there. The Australian soldier, with his 
jaunty hat and defiant stride, has a peerless record 



74 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

among the soldiers of the Allied Armies. Of their 
own accord 400,000 volunteers have crossed 12,000 
miles of sea, and, while 100,000 of them have been 
wounded and 47,000 of them have laid down their 
lives, only 3,000 have been taken prisoner by the 
enemy. 

The record of the colonies of Great Britain is an 
illustrious one. The presence of the troops from 
South Africa is one of the marvels of history. In 
fifteen years the land that was Britain's fighting foe 
has become, through the wise and wonderful colonial 
policy of the motherland, changed to fighting friend. 

Even India, from whom Germany expected so 
much, has responded to the call of the Empire. The 
best maps of the harbors and roads and cities of 
India are in Berlin. The best wireless station in 
India was erected on the smokestack of a German 
mission station and from that secret wireless station 
the "Emden" got her information concerning the 
movement of ships in the Indian Ocean. Yet India 
has sent a million men to the front, and has justified 
the words of Kipling, "Who dies if England lives." 

Italy is there. During the great spring drive we 
saw the armies of Italy moving up into the French 
battle line. America forgets that the Italy of today, 
the Italy of Cavour and Mazzini and Garibaldi, is yet 
a child among the nations. Nevertheless she has 
equipped and thrown into the battle nearly 4,000,000 
men, and holds the Central Powers at bay. 

Serbia is there ; and Portugal and Poland. I visited 
a Polish camp in the heart of France, a camp im- 



THE WORLD IN FRANCE 75 

mortalized by the letters of Alan Seeger, and there 
I found 5,000 American Poles in French uniform 
training for the coming battle. It was one of the most 
interesting of all the camps visited. Lovers of art and 
music, they were discovering ways of expression un- 
thought of in other encampments. They had taken 
limestone, and pieces of broken glass, and had 
fashioned from them wonderful representations of 
the American flag, of the Polish ensign, of President 
Wilson and Marshal Joffre, and had decorated each 
barracks with its own distinguishing insignia. They 
had created from among themselves a band consist- 
ing of thirty pieces and were training to play "The 
Marseillaise," "The Star Spangled Banner," and "God 
Save the King." From their long day's march we saw 
them come swinging into camp to the lilt of a song. 

China is there. The most interesting service I was 
present at in France was a Chinese service. No one 
seems to know how many Chinese there are in France. 
To the publisher of an American encyclopedia, which 
stated that there were 500,000 Jews in America, Mark 
Twain wrote, saying there must be some mistake, for 
he knew that many personally. I think I saw at 
least 500,000 Chinese in France ! 

They are laboring with the French and British and 
the American troops, building roads and railroads and 
acting as laborers in camp construction. There are 
about a thousand in the barracks which we visited. 
They thought they were in America. They had come 
across the Pacific and had gone through Canada and 
across the Atlantic and they thought they were then 



76 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

m America. A few days before I reached the camp a 
tragedy had taken place and an American sentry had 
shot a Chinese. The Chinese had not understood what 
was wanted and had insisted on passing along the 
highway, so he had paid for his mistake with his life. 
The men were sullen and resentful and the Army Staff 
was unable to secure satisfactory service from them. 
The whole situation was menacing and ominous. 

When conditions were most dangerous, a Chinese 
missionary, Dr. Walter Scott Elliot, stepped into the 
camp. He came as one of the YMCA Secretaries. 
He had been in China for fifteen years. Immedi- 
ately the atmosphere changed and the situation im- 
proved. He was able in a few hours to discover the 
mind of the Chinese workmen and to relate them to 
the American Staff. His presence increased their 
efficiency fifty per cent. The night he arrived we 
went to their barracks, a great dark room filled with 
wood smoke. We carried two or three bushels of 
peanuts and a basket of cigarettes and after we had 
disposed of our wares, which took only a few minutes, 
they gathered around us and around the two candles 
which lighted the darkness and listened to a talk on 
the obedience which gives freedom. The service of 
these Chinese and Indian missionaries who teach the 
men how to read and write, who interpret their needs 
and necessities to the Army, and who minister to them 
in their spiritual affairs, is one of the finest services 
rendered by the Y M C A in France and has of itself 
justified the foreign missionary policy of the Chris- 
tian Church. Writing from one of the camps, where 



THE WORLD IN FRANCE 77 

he had been sent at the urgent request of the Army, 
one of our Chinese missionaries acting as a Y M C A 
Secretary, wrote to Mr. Fred B. Shipp at the Paris 
headquarters : 

"Army Post-Office, Number 713. 

"Dear Mr. Shipp : 

"The situation here is such that I do not see how 
I could be needed more anywhere in Europe. In my 
camp there are about 800 Chinese. 250 more came 
last night, and 300 this afternoon. All the men are 
from my province, Shantung. Some are old acquain- 
tances and they understand every word I say. They 
received me most cordially and the officers who are 
directing them in their work say I have increased 
their efficiency one-fourth. 

"Major Bates is enthusiastic about the YMCA 
work. 

"Charles A. Leonard." 

Russia is in France — poor, betrayed, and bewil- 
dered Russia. Soldiers that once fought side by side 
with British and French are now marking.time, await- 
ing the day of delayed deliverance. 

Even Germany is there in the person of her pris- 
oners — Germany that can betray and deceive but can- 
not defeat; Germany that has three allies and no 
friend. 

And America is there. She occupies land from the 
ports of entry to the Vosges Mountains. The Amer- 
ican troops line the highways of France. They 
represent all America — America from shops and 
schools, from colleges and farms, from cities and 
villages, America East and West, North and South, 



78 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

America black and America white, America native- 
born and naturalized. Americans born in England, 
Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Africa, Cuba, Italy, 
Poland, Austria, even in Germany itself, are there. 
It is America one and united that is in France today. 
Rev. Robert Freeman, who has had much to do with 
the religious work connected with the Y M C A in 
France, has given this thought beautiful expression. 

We come from Old New England, 
We come from Siskiyou, 
We mowed the grain upon the plain, 
We picked the cotton too; 
We mined in far Alaska, 
We built the Roosevelt Dam ; 
We staked our claim, but all the same, 
We're one for Uncle Sam. 

Our fathers came from Scotia, 
Or they crossed the Irish sea, 
There's blood in us of Frank and Russ, 
We sing of Italy ; 
We're sons of Johnny Bull, 
We're sons of Abraham. 
It took the earth to give us birth, 
We're one for Uncle Sam. 

We're off to fight for freedom, 
In lands of foreign speech, 
To make them feel from Kut to Kiel, 
The length of Samuel's reach, 
We're off to fight for freedom, 
From here to Ispaham ; 
To bear our stars and flaming bars, 
For man and Uncle Sam. 



THE WORLD IN FRANCE 79 

We're one for Uncle Sam, 
We're one for Uncle Sam, 
It used to be for you and me, 
But now it's Uncle Sam, 
In danger anywhere, 
In earth or sea or air, 
The Boche and Hun will find us one, 
All One for Uncle Sam. 

These boys know why they are in France. They are 
there because of their righteous indignation. They 
remember Belgium, with its horrors and atrocities. 
They remember the Lusitania, with its martyred 
women and little children. They remember the gas, 
the liquid fire, and the betrayed signals of the Red 
Cross. They remember broken promises and open 
boats at sea. They remember Dernberg and Bernstorrr* 
and the traitors who directed and inspired the cruel- 
ties of this war. They have seen images and pictures 
of Christ defaced and mutilated. In France they have 
heard stories of martyred men and outraged women, 
and, while they may not have followed the philosophy 
that has led Germany into this world tragedy, they 
know who is responsible and they know that the 
Kaiser, if he had lifted his hand, could have stayed the 
storm of war. 

There is a time to be forgiving and there is a 
time to be angry. Patience with wrong is not a 
virtue. 

Our men have gone forth to the battle fired with 
a passion of holy wrath. Words written concern- 
ing John Brown of slavery days make a new ap- 
peal: 



80 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

"God give us angry men in every age, 

Men with indignant souls at sight of wrong, 

Men whose whole being glows with righteous rage, 
Men who are strong for those who need the strong." 

But our men are in France, not because of animosity 
or hatred, but because of love and the passion of a 
great ideal. They are there because they have known 
what it is to live under a flag of freedom and they 
fight for those ideals for which that flag stands. One 
night under the sound of the guns, we were conducting 
a quiet Sunday evening service. The boys had been 
singing some of the old hymns and the last one they 
sang closed with the words : 

"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the 

sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and 

me. 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men 

free, 
While God is marching on." 

After the service a young fellow who had gone forth 
into the Army from the theological seminary came 
to me and asked if I would take a message to one 
whom he loved back in America. She had promised 
to send him anything he wished, even to half the 
kingdom, and, taking her at her word, he was making 
his wishes known. Men are very open about their 
lives in France and share their secrets with those 
whom they trust. What did he want from her? He 
wanted a little American flag, the best she could buy. 



THE WORLD IN FRANCE 81 

And why did he wish it? He wanted an American 
flag, the best money could buy, to drape over her 
picture. 

That story reveals the psychology of the American 
Army — an American flag, draped around a woman's 
face. The face may be of one whose hair has grown 
gray with the years or of a little curly-headed child. 
The face may be that of mother, wife, sweetheart, 
sister, or little babe. That is the secret which holds 
the heart of the American soldier, and for love's sake 
he suffers and endures all things that they and those 
whom he loves may be free. 

When I was in France the Paris edition of the New 
York Herald offered a prize for the best poem written 
by one of the soldiers. It was won by Private W. L. 
Grundish of the 15th Engineers. What he wrote was 
not for himself only, but for all his comrades. 

"When I behold the tense and tragic night 

Shrouding the earth in vague, symbolic gloom, 
And when I think that, ere my fancy's flight 

Has reached the portals of the inner room 
Where knightly ghosts, guarding the secret ark 

Of brave romance, through me shall sing again, 
Death may engulf me in eternal dark — 

Still I have no regret nor poignant pain. 
Better in one ecstatic epic day 

To strike a blow for Glory and for Truth, 
With ardent, singing heart to toss away 

In Freedom's holy cause my eager youth, 
Than bear as weary years pass one by one, 
The knowledge of a sacred task undone." 



CHAPTER VII 
A SUNDAY WITH THE ARMY 

In the first-line trenches Sunday slips out of the 
reckoning. I met a couple of lads returning from 
the firing line, who had a wager whether the day they 
got their leave was Saturday or Monday. Both of 
them lost. The day was Sunday. 

In the base camps, however, and along the lines of 
communication, in port cities when troops are not 
arriving, in the great construction camps, Sunday has 
a unique place in the Army. People who say the 
Army takes no account of Sunday and remind you 
of the great battles fought on that day fail to dis- 
tinguish between the front line and the camps of the 
rear. 

It is impossible, even in France, to escape the atmos- 
phere of Sunday. The boys themselves create the 
atmosphere. Even if the YMCA canteen is open 
and ball game, boxing bout, or band concert is sched- 
uled for the parade ground, the day has its own mes- 
sage and its own great memories for thousands. 

I have in my mind a picture of one of the most 
beautiful of France's beautiful roads. It runs between 
rows of trees and had blossomed into springtime 
beauty. It follows the course of one of the most 
fascinating rivers of France. From camp to village 

82 



A SUNDAY WITH THE ARMY 83 

is a distance of four miles and our boys in groups, 
in pairs, and alone, were taking their Sunday after- 
noon stroll in the sun. The atmosphere of the whole 
situation fell upon me like a benediction. 

A lad of twenty from North Dakota was walking 
with a group of little French boys. They were making 
a language path for their friendship by exchanging 
English words for French. With the help of a little 
pocket French-English dictionary, they were intro- 
ducing each other to a new world. They had met by 
appointment and this was the third Sunday they had 
been together. Such scenes are common in hundreds 
of French villages. 

I was in France on Easter Sunday. The great Ger- 
man drive of March 21st was on, and the long-range 
gun was shelling Paris. The air was electric with war 
excitement. I was under appointment to conduct 
Easter services at the Y M C A hut in the town where 
General Pershing's headquarters are located. Travel- 
ing was very difficult, almost impossible. The railroads 
were freighted with troops going to the front and 
many of the stations were crowded with civilians 
seeking safety — refugees of northern France. 

The night before we had been in a town where 
for five successive nights the Germans had dropped 
their death-dealing bombs. They had threatened to 
destroy the place in twelve days. I saw the entire 
population moving out. It was a sight never to be 
effaced from memory. I saw old men and women led 
by wounded soldier sons ; boys and girls, each carrying 
a loaf of bread; little curly-haired children in baby- 



84 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

carriages ; the sick on stretchers — all moving out leav- 
ing behind them their homes and their shops, moving 
out to spend the dreaded night upon the roadside, in 
the woods or in the wine cellars of the hills. In one 
of the wine cellars where forty people had taken 
refuge only one escaped when a bomb fell upon their 
abri. Next day, fifty miles to the south, I found the 
streets and the station crowded with these refugees 
who were seeking security, especially for their little 
children, in the far southland of France. 

I reached the headquarters of General Pershing 
long after midnight. The darkness of war was upon 
the village. Not a light in street or home was to be 
seen. I felt my way through the narrow streets, lis- 
tening for a footfall. Darkness is one of the fruits 
of war and the dark towns of northern France speak 
of air raids and enemy bombs; at night to walk in 
the light is a forgotten luxury. A moonlight night 
awakens other thoughts than those of the poet and 
instead of being welcomed is dreaded. 

Next day was Easter Sunday. The morning broke 
in beauty upon the French hills surrounding the camp. 
It was the American Army's first Easter since the 
declaration of war, and every man was thinking back 
through the months to the old familiar scenes before 
the war came to claim him. There was everywhere a 
touch of Easter about the Y M C A huts throughout 
France. Soldiers and sailors met in port cities, along 
the lines of communication, behind front line trenches, 
and joined in the Lord's Supper. 

A young lad from Pennsylvania, just past his 



A SUNDAY WITH THE ARMY 85 

seventeenth year, said that it was the first Easter he 
and his widowed mother had been separated, but he 
felt she would be glad to know he had not missed the 
Easter Communion. 

The Chaplain led the morning service in the "Y" 
hut at headquarters. A group of army boys led the 
singing. A soldier in khaki played the piano, and an- 
other the violin. One of the "Y" women, just before 
the service opened, brought to the table which served 
for a pulpit a bouquet of flowers she had gathered in 
the woods nearby. Behind the platform on the wall 
the French, British, and American flags hung side by 
side. The hut was crowded with men. They sat on 
narrow benches without backs. They belonged to the 
ranks and to the staff; a major and a private, a cap- 
tain and a sergeant, an orderly and an officer, sat side 
by side. The hymns spoke of things fundamental — 
"Come, Thou Almighty King/' "O God, Our Help 
in Ages Past," "Abide with Me." The sermon was 
short, as all army sermons ought to be, and the 
prayers were simple, speaking of home and loved ones, 
of the wounded, the sick, and the dying, of the day's 
cares and tomorrow's needs, of the power of God to 
help and hold forever. 

All over France that day similar services were re- 
peated. At one of the aviation centers 700 men 
crowded the "Y" hut, and 200 remained for the Com- 
munion Service that followed. In one of the port 
cities, where Dr. John C. Acheson conducted memor- 
able religious services, five sailor-lads ran three miles, 
fearing they would miss the service where a hundred 



86 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

men from the ships were gathering for the Holy 
Supper. Men were touching God in a foreign land and 
were holding fellowship with those they loved at home. 
The great camp, with its restless, buoyant young 
manhood, is sufficient unto itself Sunday afternoon. 
It needs no direction, no oversight, no supervision; 
with a baseball and a bat the American Army can take 
care of itself when duty ceases to call. Every regi- 
ment has its ball-team, the best in France, and every 
hundred yards has its ball-game, with its interested 
spectators and its applauding rivalry. Company C. 
of the 15th Engineers claims to have a team that has 
never been beaten. It is not an unusual sight on a 
Sunday afternoon to see the people of France watch- 
ing America playing ball, and behind their intense in- 
terest they are saying that a good ball-player will make 
a superb grenade thrower. Meanwhile the band has 
gathered its own crowd and has stirred memories of 
Broadway and Fifth Avenue, and as they play the 
boys break out into singing: 

"Where do we go from here boys, 
Where do we go from here? 
Slip a pill to Kaiser Bill 
And make him shed a tear; 
And when we see the enemy 
We'll shoot him in the rear, 
Oh joy, oh boy, where do we go from here?" 

Our Easter Sunday afternoon was spent with the 
boys in the Roosevelt Hospital Unit. Rev. George M. 
Duff of the Y M C A had charge of the afternoon's 
services, and Senator Leroy Percy and I had 



A SUNDAY WITH THE ARMY 87 

promised to help. To spend Easter Sunday in a hos- 
pital in a foreign land is not the most pleasant of 
prospects, but we were glad to carry a message of 
friendly cheer to the men. Some of our boys had 
been to the front and had returned sick or wounded 
or gassed, and to ward after ward we carried the 
sunshine of church and home. We took with us an 
armful of hymn-books, some Easter pictures, and a 
little baby organ. At one service Secretary Duff played 
and I led the singing, and in the next ward the order 
was reversed. The singing was best when he led, for 
the mass singing of a group of gassed and wounded 
men partook mostly of solo singing on the part of the 
leader, and Duff has a well-trained tenor voice. The 
services were familiar and friendly. Personal friend- 
ship goes far in the Army. The men like to be 
"located" and in a few minutes they had related them- 
selves to Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, New York, Mon- 
tana, Pennsylvania. In France, Chicago and Denver 
are neighbors, and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia twin 
cities. Senator Percy told them about America and 
the unfailing love that held the hearts of the home 
folk, and of the nation's pride in their well-doing. 
We read the ever-thrilling Easter story and gave a 
short talk on the Easter message. 

The first group needed a word peculiar to itself. It 
was composed of men who had through their own 
misconduct brought sorrow upon themselves. They 
had stood up against the Hun undaunted, but had 
surrendered to the evil thing that lies in wait to de- 
ceive and destroy. It was not a word of reproach they 



88 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

heard, but a word calling them to their best. "Love 
believeth all things, hopeth all things." They listened 
quietly to words written by a private, and felt the 
pull of the Spirit within them. 

"The kid has gone to the colors, 

And we don't know what to say ; 
The kid we've loved and coddled, 

Stepped out for the flag today. 
We thought him a child, a baby, 

With never a care at all, 
But the country called him man-size, 

And the kid has heard the call. 
He paused to watch the recruiting, 

When fired by the fife and drum, 
He bowed his head to Old Glory, 

And thought that it whispered, 'Come/ 
The kid, not being a slacker, 

Stood forth with patriotic joy, 
To add his name to the roster, 

And, God, we're proud of that boy." 

In the next ward were boys who had been wounded 
on the Lorraine front. They had gone "over the top" 
for freedom. One brave fellow, whose wound would 
put him out of the war, said, when we tried to sympa- 
thize with him, "Well, war is hell, and hell is fire, and 
it wasn't a pink tea I expected." One young lad had 
five wounds and he was cheerfully counting the days 
when he would be back in it all again. To them the 
Easter message was interpreted as one of victory, the 
triumph of truth, the conquest of life at its best, of 
the living Christ whose triumph is the pledge of 
victory over every foe. 



A SUNDAY WITH THE ARMY 89 

I shall never forget the evening service. The games 
of the afternoon were finished, the letters home had 
been mailed, the walks to the outlying villages were 
over, and the great "Y" hut at headquarters was 
crowded to the doors. Two or three hundred men, 
not able to secure seats, stood during the entire serv- 
ice. A choir of soldiers led the singing, but little 
leading was needed. A boy who came up out of the 
audience sang: 

"When I fear the foe will win, 
Christ will hold me fast." 

French soldiers in blue gave color to the crowd in 
khaki. One always sees French soldiers, privates or 
officers, at the "Y" services. Perhaps they wish to 
improve their English, but frequently they express 
deep personal interest in the message. Uniforms and 
official insignia do not change men and these boys in 
khaki belong to American church-going homes. It is 
easier to preach to soldiers than to any other group 
of men. Their religion is unconventional, personal, 
practical, and vital. Kennedy Studdert in his "Rough 
Rhymes of a Padre" has touched off the soldier's 
theology. 

"It ain't as I 'opes E'll keep me safe 
While the other blokes go down ; 
It ain't as I wants to leave the world 
And wear an 'ero's crown. 
It ain't for that as I says my prayers 
When I goes to an attack, 
But I pray that whatever comes my way 
I may never turn me back. 



90 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

I leaves the matter o' life and death 

To the Father who knows what's best; 

And I prays that I still may play the man 

Whether I turns east or west. 

I'd sooner that it were east, ye know, 

To Blighty and my gal Sue ; 

I'd sooner be there wi' the gold in 'er 'air 

And the skies behind, all blue ; 

But still I pray I may do my bit, 

And then if I must turn west, 

I'll be unashamed when my name is named, 

And I'll find a soldier's rest." 

After the service a lad came up to the platform and, 
taking his New Testament from his pocket, opened it 
and, without a word, showed me where he had writ- 
ten on the flyleaf my name, the date, and two New 
Testament texts. "Where did we meet before?" I 
asked. "Allentown," he answered. . I had spoken in 
the Y M C A tent at Allentown to the Ambulance 
Corps in the summer of 191 7, and the message still 
lived. That is the reward one gets now and again, 
and it is enough. 



CHAPTER VIII 
WOMEN AND THE WAR 

In a book all women have read, "Sesame and Lilies," 
John Ruskin says: "There is not a war in the world, 
no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable 
for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you 
have not hindered. There is no suffering, no injustice, 
no misery, in the earth, but the guilt of it rests solely 
with you." 

Ruskin feels that women sense injustice and react 
to cruelty quicker than men. They are quick to gird 
on the armor for defense and vindication. They glory 
in heroism and rejoice in valor. Since the days of 
chivalry war has waited upon a woman's word. 

If women inspire the sacrifice of war, they also 
inspire victory. This war could not have been car- 
ried through but for the bravery, the heroism, the 
self-sacrifice of the women of the world. 

We think of the women who have given their men 
and have sent them forth uncomplainingly. We think 
of the mothers who have kissed their boys good-bye; 
of young women just married who have closed their 
cherished homes, and while their husbands have put 
on the uniform have girded themselves for service in 
office and shop and factory; of girls who have turned 

9i 



92 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

away their faces from happy and alluring visions of 
the future to urge those whose lives were linked in 
love with theirs, to go out into the unknown dangers. 
"Remember/' said the Captain in a letter quoted else- 
where, "that it is your mother who is brave, not you." 
I know a mother in Canada who has sent two sons 
to the war. After the first month in France they 
were both reported missing. They had been in the 
battle of Vimy Ridge and from that day to this no 
word has come back to her. She still goes about her 
work; no one has ever seen her shed a tear, but many 
have heard her say: "I am glad they were willing to 
go. I would not like to have had them hide behind 
the sons of other mothers." 

"Honor the men who fight and fall, 
Honor the men who fight and live, 
Honor the women most of all, 
Who suffer and give. 

"They give their men, their sons, 

To make the nations free, 

They never see the battle field, 

But they gain the victory." 

Far down to the south of France I met a woman 
managing a little shop and selling post-cards to those 
who would buy. Her face, it was easy to see, had 
been purified with much sorrow. She had known 
what it was to suffer. She was one of the refugees 
from Belgium, proud of the martyrdom of her people 
in which she shared, rejoicing because of persecution 
for the cause of righteousness. 



WOMEN AND THE WAR 93 

Everywhere in France one is face to face with hero- 
ism. One night, near the Verdun front, we slept in 
a town which in the early days of war had been in 
German hands. We were billeted in the home of the 
former Mayor of the village. When the Huns ravaged 
the country they dragged the Mayor out into the 
street, made him stand with his back to the wall of his 
home and shot him dead. In a few days the mother 
of the household was killed by a German shell. The 
two girls of that home now live alone in that desolate 
place and carry on the work of the farm. To such 
belongs the Croix de Guerre. 

There are no idle women in France and no weep- 
ing women. They are all working women. They are 
the porters at the depots, the guards on the trains, the 
conductors on the tramcars, the laborers on the farm 
and in the factory. If the men of France are in blue, 
the women of France are in black. How magnificently 
they carry themselves! I saw a French woman serv- 
ing as conductor on one of the metropolitan trains one 
Saturday evening. She was dressed in true French 
taste, and I instinctively felt, even in that under- 
ground car, as if I were being received by a lady of 
refinement in her own drawing-room. 

There is a French woman on the Lorraine battle 
front who has expended a million francs caring for the 
graves of the soldier dead. One of our American 
boys was buried behind the line while we were there, 
and upon his grave this French patriot placed with 
reverent hand the Stars and Stripes, the flag for 
which he died. 



94 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

Over 1,500,000 women are working in the muni- 
tion factories of Great Britain, and because of this, 
Britain is now sending to France in a week as much 
ammunition as was accumulated in all the Empire 
when war was declared. The women of Britain are 
soldiers who know how to endure hardship. They 
wear no sign of mourning, for they walk with their 
dead in the land of the living. 

Longfellow called Florence Nightingale "The Lady 
with the Lamp." There are thousands of Florence 
Nightingales today upon the battle fields of France 
and Flanders, holding in their strong hands the light 
of love and mercy. Writing from the front, one of 
these women serving in a military hospital speaks for 
all her companions : 

"Never have I been so affected and moved in my 
life as at the hospital this morning. An American 
lad, right from the front and wounded, was operated 
on, and while coming out of ether he lived over those 
minutes before he was hit. It was so dramatic, so 
terrible that it made our hearts beat faster, for no 
longer was I in a civilized hospital, but in a veritable 
hell of mud and fighting. Oh, I have heard French 
soldiers and I love them, but to hear it in our own 
dear American slang made me realize that after all 
it cannot but be one's own country first. He kept 
crying, 'Ah, I've got that one. Don't tell mother 
I've killed him, don't. Damn this mud. After them, 
boys. Fix bayonets, that's a boy.' And with clenched 
teeth and shaking his fine young head, 'Damn the 
Huns, the dirty Boches, ah, (a sound of horror) they 



WOMEN AND THE WAR 95 

are coming waves on waves of them.' My merely 
writing can't possibly make you picture it, the dark- 
ened room on account of the raid, the smell of ether, 
the tossing figure and young voice, and there are going 
to be hundreds of them, thousands of them, with youth 
and the same splendid spirit in them. 'I forgot/ he 
repeated endlessly, 'they can't lick an American,' and 
I knew then that they couldn't, not possibly. Oh, 
how depressed, how unhappy we are about the whole 
state of the war! Even if the offensive has been 
stopped, the losses have been so tremendous, so 
ghastly that one almost wonders if the game is worth 
the candle. The poor, poor English ! My little friend, 
the Welshman here at the hotel — Welsh Fusiliers he is 
— keeps thinking of his pals lying dead in those 
woods which England so hardly won to lose again. 
The thought of the uselessness of the Somme offensive 
saddens them so." 

In a military hospital one wonders whether the 
heroes are the women or the wounded. I have seen 
refined and cultured women by their very presence 
bring cheer to a hospital full of wounded and broken 
men. Every nurse is a front-trench hero. 

There are about five hundred Y M C A women in 
France. Two have been mustered out by death, 
victims of German shells. Under the sound of the 
guns, I met a young woman, refined and beautiful, 
a former professor in one of our great American col- 
leges, serving with the Y M C A, the men of the Army. 
She was equipped with steel helmet and gas mask. 
When the Colonel discovered her he said, "What in 



96 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

h are you doing here?" She replied, "I am here 



to help." She was unafraid and she was invaluable. 
She understood and spoke French fluently and was 
the only one in that area who could relate the "Y" to 
the French Army, and sometimes the only one who 
could act as liaison between American and French 
officials. She was worth a half dozen men in the 
peculiar situation where she served. 

The Government never calls for help but women 
are the first to respond. There is a growing group of 
American telephone girls now in France. I met a 
dozen of them at dinner one evening. They are 
sheltered and mothered by a Detroit Y. W. C. A. 
woman of sense and culture. She has left a home of 
luxury and comfort and has gone to serve across the 
sea. These young telephone girls were put in her 
charge. They had gone to France prepared for any 
sacrifice. Some of them had cut their hair. Others 
were equipped with army shoes and all had army uni- 
forms. For every six months' service they are to re- 
ceive a gold strip to be placed on the sleeve of their 
dressy dark blue uniforms, for they, too, are among 
America's heroes. 

When the first great German drive was on, General 
Haig said to his men : "With our backs to the wall and 
believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us 
must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes 
and the freedom of manhood depend alike upon the 
conduct of each of us at this critical moment." Our 
men, too, fight with their backs to the wall. The wall 
upon which they lean is American womanhood. 



k: 



> 

ts 

D 
W 
2! 







WOMEN AND THE WAR 97 

"Human beings," says Anthony Trollope, "need a wall 
to lean on, some support is necessary." The sup- 
port men need is a woman's hand and a woman's 
heart. This is the answer to the repeated question of 
home folks, "What can we do?" The answer is, 
"Stand fast." The words of Ruskin which introduced 
this chapter may be continued in this connection. 
"The soul's armor," he says, "is never well set to the 
heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it is 
only when she braces it loosely that the honor of 
manhood fails." In the background of the battle the 
soldier sees a woman's face. 

In his letters home Coningsby Dawson says: "We 
have always lived so near to one another's affection 
that this going out alone is more lonely to me than to 
most men. I have always had some one near at hand 
with love-blinded eyes to see my faults as springing 
from higher motives. Now I reach out my hands 
across six thousand miles and only touch yours with 
my imagination to say good-by. What queer sights 
these eyes, which have been almost your eyes, will 
witness! If my hands do anything respectable, re- 
member that it is your hands that are doing it. It is 
your influence as a family that has made me ready for 
the part I have to play, and where I go, you follow 
me." 

Certain it is, that the touch of home is the touch of 
power. The songs most frequently sung by British 
soldiers who have been in the struggle for nearly four 
years are "home" songs, and the one best known and 
most loved is : 



9 B PORT TO LISTENING POST 

"In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned 
street, 

Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair ; 
I can see their two faces so tender and sweet, 

And I love every wrinkle that's there." 

On the streets of a city in France toward which our 
American troop trains converge, I fell in with a young 
fellow who was seeking information which he had 
hitherto failed to secure. He seemed depressed and 
soon opened his heart. He had found army life hard. 
His words were, "I feel myself sagging." He was a 
retiring lad and the comradeship of the Army had not 
yet gripped him. He said he had been ordered to one 
of the port cities of France. I told him of the men 

and the work there. "They say it's a h hole," he 

said. I told him that things were better than they 
were and that he had the secret of security within 
himself. "Not in myself," he said, "but in this." He 
drew from his pocket the photo of a girl still in her 
teens and said, "It's her face that keeps me safe." 

The faces of the young women serving as canteen 
workers in Y M C A huts and officers' clubs are the 
only reminders of home and loved ones which thou- 
sands of our men in France have. Many of the boys 
have been careless and thoughtless. They carry to 
France the same temptations, the same weaknesses 
which dogged their steps at home. It is a familiar 
sight in the huts to see young fellows hanging around 
the canteen for no other reason presumably than to 
hear a woman's voice, and catch the inspiration of 
her presence. Since history began, immoral women 



WOMEN AND THE WAR 99 

have always followed the Army, but in this war our 
men have been followed and helped by good women. 
The moral value of their service cannot be filed away 
in any card index system. It belongs to the realm of 
the inarticulate. 

The women of the "Y" are at their best when they 
take the initiative. They furnish and beautify the 
hut, the officers' club, and the barracks which are 
assigned to them. They plan for little homelike after- 
noons when the weather is bad, on off" hours, in the 
evenings, and on Sunday. They make chocolate and 
sandwiches. They stand behind the counter and hand 
out candy, tobacco, crackers, and good cheer. They 
arrange concerts and entertainments, and pick out the 
depressed and dispirited for special attention. They 
recommend books and conduct Bible classes, and are 
everywhere accredited, "the angels of the camp." 

One night near the camp, when the guns were boom- 
ing, we held a short Sunday evening service in a 
camouflaged barracks. The men were unusually seri- 
ous. After the meeting broke up a young officer 
slipped up and said, "Do you know the 91st Psalm?" 
I began, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the 
Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Al- 
mighty. I will say of Jehovah, He is my refuge and 
my fortress; my God, in whom I trust." "Will you 
come to my room?" he said, and we walked over to 
the officers' barracks. We sat down in a room dimly 
lighted and slightly warmed by a little gas-o-peep fire, 
and he began reading a letter from his wife asking him 
to make the 91st Psalm his own. Then he told about 



loo PORT TO LISTENING POST 

his life and his father's life. It was a fascinating 
story that cannot be given here. 

He opened his heart to one who the day before had 
been a stranger, and he told of his plans for the wel- 
fare of his men. "What made you such a staunch 
Christian ?" I said. He took from the wall beside his 
cot a girl's picture. "She did," he said. "She's the 
most wonderful woman in the world." It was the 
picture not of a woman, but of a slip of a girl with 
laughing eyes and fluffy hair — a girl with a soul, and 
for him she was like a wall of fire. 



CHAPTER IX 
ON LEAVE 

The first soldier I met in France was recovering 
from a debauch. He was not an American. He be- 
longed to one of the armies of our Allies. I met him 
on the street of one of the great port cities. He was 
without money and very talkative. According to his 
statement he had been separated from his money the 
night before and was now 500 miles from his base 
camp. 

We talked about the war and about France and then 
I asked him about his home. The word "Home" is 
the key to the soldier's heart. He drew from his 
pocket a photograph. It was a picture of his wife 
and his two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, 6,000 
miles away. In a moment of penitence he said, "For 
their sake I am going back on the square, but these 
days 'on leave' knock h out of me." 

A soldier "on leave" presents one of the problems 
of the war. The French soldier can go home. Every- 
thing is in his favor. He is fighting with his back 
to his own fireside and has the advantage of being 
within a day's journey of those he loves. 

It is wonderful to see the French soldier return to 
his home after he has served his days at the front. 
He takes his place in the social order as if nothing 

101 



102 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

had happened. Pie returns to his desk again. He 
takes his place in the working world. He is found 
in the shop or in the factory. He drives a taxi or a 
tramcar, and is happy in his old associations and in 
the fact that he has earned for a week at least more 
than a soldier's pay. If he is an officer, or has wealth 
in his own keeping, he will shoot woodcock for a 
week, or ride horseback with his friends. 

In a certain sense this is also true of the British 
soldier. He, too, is within a day's journey of his 
home. His base camp is within a few hours of the 
channel, and the channel crossing can be made in a 
night. The British Tommy and the soldiers from 
Ireland and Scotland are always within reach of home 
and in the motherland the Colonials are welcomed in 
their own language. 

It is different with the American soldier. He can- 
not go home. The language of France is strange to 
him, and Britain to most is a foreign land. His heart 
leads him to Paris. Paris draws him like a magnet, 
but Paris is denied him. Those of us who have been 
in Paris in war time feel that in this, the soldier is 
subject to no great deprivation. Paris with its dark 
streets, with its air raids, and its long-range shells, is 
not the best place in the world for rest and recreation. 
The supposition is that Paris is denied to the American 
soldier because there, strong and subtle temptations 
are presented. The temptations, however, which sol- 
diers face in the capital city of France present them- 
selves in even worse forms in other cities, and the 
soldier "on leave" must find protection within himself. 



ON LEAVE 103 

It is good to know that the United States Govern- 
ment, and the officers of the Army and Navy desire 
to do everything in their power to make the life of the 
soldier secure. 

Liquor is prohibited to American soldiers, as are 
also wine and beer containing more than twelve per 
cent alcohol. Wine shops are closed except during 
meal hours. The meal hours, however, are generous, 
the evening hours being from five o'clock till nine! 
It is impossible for the American Army to regulate 
the liquor traffic of France, for French trade is sub- 
ject to French law. The American Army, however, 
can legislate for itself, and this it has done. 

Disturbed by the conflicting and contradictory ac- 
counts of the moral situation in France, General 
Pershing cabled the following message to the United 
States Government: 

"Inasmuch as the press reports indicate considerable 
discussion regarding recent orders issued by me re- 
garding the control of drinking, it is deemed advisable 
to cable pertinent paragraphs of the orders for such 
use as the Department may care to make. Paragraph 
1 1 : Commanding Officers at all places where our 
troops may be located will confer with the local 
French authorities and use every endeavor to limit to 
the lowest possible number the places where intoxi- 
cants are sold. It is desired that these authorities be 
assisted in locating non-licensed resorts, which should 
be reported immediately to the proper authority for 
the necessary action. Paragraph 12 : Soldiers are for- 
bidden either to buy or accept as gifts from inhabi- 
tants, whiskey, brandy, champagne, liquor, or other 
alcoholic beverages other than light wines or beer. 



104 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

The gift or retail sale of these by inhabitants in the 
zone of the Army is forbidden by French laws. Com- 
manding Officers will see that all drinking places 
where alcoholic liquors named above are sold, are 
designated as 'Off Limits' and the necessary means 
adopted to prevent soldiers visiting them. As there is 
little beer sold in France, men who drink are thus 
limited to the light native wines used by all French 
people. Even this is discouraged among our troops 
in every possible way. I hope to secure the coopera- 
tion of the French Government to prevent the sale 
of all liquors and wines to our troops. The question 
is under discussion. Personally I favor prohibition 
in the Army, but it is impracticable and inadvisable 
to issue orders that cannot be enforced without the 
cooperation of the French Government." 



The temptation to immorality presents a peculiar 
problem to our American officials. The laws of 
France are not the laws of America. The American 
Army cannot make French laws. Our Army can 
make laws for itself, and in doing so has succeeded 
in creating and maintaining the cleanest army the 
world has ever known. The Army in France is fitter 
and cleaner than it was when it left America. The 
official estimate of troops in one of the port cities 
in relation to venereal disease in October, 191 7, was 
16.89 to the thousand, and in January, 1918, it was 
only 2. 1 1 to the thousand. In February, 1918, there 
were 674 cases in one of our base hospitals : 348 cases 
of mumps, 37 pneumonia, 23 measles, 19 scarlet fever, 
39 venereal disease, the rest minor complaints. In a 
camp of 1,200 negroes, only 25 were in the guard 



ON LEAVE 105 

house, 16 being there for absence without leave, 3 
for fighting, 2 for carrying pistols, 4 for drinking. 
The situation has often perplexed and discouraged the 
men responsible for the efficiency of the Army, but at 
present everything goes to show that nothing has been 
left undone to safeguard the morals of our men and 
that America has succeeded beyond all praise. 

Sometimes the men when they get their leave prefer 
to stay near the base. Money frequently is the deter- 
mining factor. A boy getting $33.00 a month, after 
he has paid for his Liberty Bond and his insurance 
and sent home a little to his family, has a narrow 
margin upon which to take a vacation. And the 
American soldier does send money home. In March 
the soldiers sent through the Y M C A to their homes 
in America $97,000, and during the first two weeks 
in April they sent $95,000. 

To the soldiers who remain in camp the Y M C A 
owes particular responsibility. The Athletic Depart- 
ment of the "Y" is a veritable means of grace. The 
men become soggy with monotony. They come back 
from the trenches with a peculiar emotional life that 
concentrates itself upon the war. Their thought goes 
round and round the treadwheel of trench life. Call 
it shell shock or what you may, it is a physical condi- 
tion which borders on extreme danger. Reaction sets 
in quickly and more army men are destroyed through 
the wrong use of leisure than through anything else. 
It is then that football, baseball, and basketball become 
possessed with magic power, and the men are lifted 
out of themselves into a new world. 



io6 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

Those who can afford it may travel while "on leave." 
They go to the south of France or to Brittany. Many 
are students and are interested in the history, litera- 
ture, and life of the French people. They expect to 
see France before they return to America, and their 
leisure becomes an opportunity for self-education and 
personal enjoyment. 

The chief rendezvous, however, of the American 
soldier when "on leave" is the rest camps among the 
French Alps at Aix-les-Bains and Chambery. To these 
and other leave resorts they go, at the expense of the 
Army, for a ten days' rest. The valley of the Savoy 
area is one of the most beautiful and picturesque in 
the world. Aix-les-Bains is situated on Lake Bourget, 
which is eleven miles long and lies at the base of Mont 
du Chat. All kinds of crops are grown in the valley of 
Aix, the fields are covered with grain, and on the hill- 
side are the familiar vineyards of France. Higher up 
are groves of chestnut trees, then the pine woods, and 
further up the Alpine forests. The snowcapped moun- 
tains rise like sentinels in the distance, and from the 
top of Mont Revard a marvelous view can be had of 
the Swiss Alps and of Mont Blanc. The air is pure 
and the temperature most regular. It is one of the 
world's most famous resorts. Its medicinal waters are 
famous and the Romans gave the place the name of 
Aquae Gratianae. The remains of their splendid baths 
are still there. 

The Y M C A has taken over the famous Casino of 
Aix-les-Bains, and the hotels of the town have been 
chartered for the use of American soldiers when on 



ON LEAVE 107 

leave. In this rest area the "Y" has a staff of fifty- 
two Secretaries, half of them women. 

When the war fell upon France the Casino lost its 
patronage. - No gambling has been permitted in France 
since the first days of the war. At a cost of several 
hundred thousand francs the Y M C A has taken over 
this marvelous building. What was once a gambling 
hall and a place of luxury has become a place of repair 
for the armies of America. On the walls may be seen 
such signs as : 

"If you want a New Testament ask for it." 

"Ask the 'Y' Secretary for the new swear words." 

"Can the cussing." 

"Communion service Sunday morning at 10 o'clock." 

"Excursion on the lake this afternoon at 2 o'clock. 
Tickets at the desk." 

"The train for Mont Revard leaves at 1 o'clock. 
Mr. Smith will lead the party." 

In what was once the Royal Bar a prayer service 
is held every morning at nine o'clock. The "Grand 
Circle," a most attractive theater, which seats com- 
fortably a thousand people, is the "Y" play-house for 
the men on leave. It was there that Mr. E. H. 
Sothern, as a Y M C A Secretary, gave his exhibitions 
of Shakespeare, and there also that the John Craig 
Company of Boston produced their exquisite shows for 
the amusement of our men. 

The letters of the boys themselves reflect the value 
of this splendid service. 



io8 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

"France, February 21, 1918. 

Your letter of the 29th of December received ten 
days ago, but had no chance to answer it till now, as 
I have been in the trenches for quite a long time. At 
the present time I am on pass at one of the most 
beautiful resorts in France. The people are very kind 
to us, and will do anything for us, if they think they 
can please us by it. 

I was in the first bunch to land here. They took 
movies of us, pictures for the papers and magazines. 
Maybe we weren't an awful sight, mud from head to 
foot, but that made us look more realistic. I tell you 

Sherman was right; war is h , but we'll make the 

Boche think it's worse than that when we get through 
with them. When we first went into the line the 
Boche were very careless, they would stick their 
heads out of the trenches; but now they know the 
Americans are there, and they don't dare show them- 
selves if they value their life. There have been times 
when I couldn't have sold my life for two cents. Just 
imagine how you would feel if you were lying in the 
bottom of a muddy trench with shrapnel bursting 
around you and covering you up with dirt. It would 
make you homesick, wouldn't it ? That is an everyday 
occurrence. 

The Y M C A people are right on the job here. 
When we landed, the train had hardly stopped before 
they were there giving us chocolate. You should see 
their building, most magnificent place I ever saw — 
hardwood floors, enormous mirrors, huge marble pil- 
lars, billiard tables, theater, moving picture, beautiful 
reading and writing rooms — it certainly is grand. Be- 
fore the Y M C A took it over it was used by million- 
aires. Just imagine staying at the same hotel J. P. 
Morgan stayed at — some class ! 

Mostly every day we climb the mountains some 



ON LEAVE 109 

5,000 feet high, from which can be seen the whole 
of the Alps. It certainly is grand. I have a beautiful 
room with a fine bed, electric lights, much better than 
pumping water out of a dugout and going to sleep in 
a bunk made of chicken wire, but this life is the most 
healthy of all." 

"March 24, 1918. 

Until my trip to Aix I must confess I lacked confi- 
dence in the Y M C A, and I used to teach in ours 
back in the States. At Aix my confidence was com- 
pletely restored and I shall never do any knocking 
again. I shall have to bend my energies and aspira- 
tions along that line to something that really needs 
reform. Perhaps I can find something. Scarcely a 
day goes by that we do not go over the trip to Aix 
again. You may be sure that we miss you all ; indeed 
the meeting of such charming people was just what 
we needed, for it gave us a sort of mental renovation. 
You surely are doing your bit in a splendid way." 

"April 2, 1918. 

The Y M C A and its representatives, both men and 
women, are doing wonderful work over here and they 
have huts and workers in every camp and sector of 
the U. S. Army. The retinue of workers here at Aix 
les Bains is too wonderful to describe. Never since 
I left home, the first of May, have I encountered 
such welcome and hospitality. They try to make you 
forget all your troubles and enjoy yourself in a very 
jolly and fitting manner and what is more, they actu- 
ally do. If the mothers back home could see the moral 
effect produced by these people on their sons, I am 
sure that a great burden and a lot of worry would be 
lifted from them." 

"April 2, 1918. 

The Y M C A is the one smile of our life here. 
They are at the ports, concentration camps, in the 



no PORT TO LISTENING POST 

cities, on the lines of communication, and go direct 
to the trenches. They have an utter disregard of their 
own safety, saying, 'Where you go, we go/ Two 
young YMCA ladies have been knocked off this 
week, and they only arrived in February. They are 
everywhere with a word of cheer, encouragement, 
reading, and the ever-famous canteen. Then we 
arrive 'on permission' and find them in possession of 
the big Casino at Aix les Bains, with all sorts of 
amusements at a cost of $1,000,000 a year — well 
spent; for thousands of fellows will come here." 

"April 5, 1918. 
I would be delighted if you could tell mother just 
how we looked and seemed to be feeling from our 
toes up. Tell her of the smiles that the soldiers are 
wearing, how we spend our vacation on leave and all 
the good things that the 'Y' does for us in the Savoy 
district. I will say that it does everything that a good 
friend or brother or sister could do for one on a 
visit. 

The Savoy district is charming and it has a most 
wonderful history. It inspires one to higher ideals 
and gives one a chance to think why we are fighting 
for justice and that we never will give up the fight till 
German vain ideas are crushed and she adopts the 
modern idea of government as it has been set forth 
by the people of the world. 

Give Mother and all a good excuse why I don't 
write more often, or why they don't get big fat let- 
ters. I will say, it's a strenuous life that we are living 
and after the duties of the day are finished, a letter 
is out of the question." 

When the soldiers arrive, they are welcomed at the 
station, and when they leave they are escorted to the 



ON LEAVE in 

train. The day we were there 200 of them marched 
through the streets from the Casino to the depot, sing- 
ing their cheery songs, only to find that the train was 
three hours late. 

The officer in charge gave the boys leave to go 
where they liked. When the time came to round 
them up again all but seven of the 200 were found in 
the Casino. They had returned to the Y M C A head- 
quarters, drawn by the subtle attraction of the staff 
and the service. 

The days "on leave" are planned for the boys by 
the men and women of the "Y." Boat trips upon the 
lake, fishing parties in the hills, walks and picnics, are 
planned for every day of their stay. The crowning 
trip, however, is the ride up the cogwheel railway to 
the top of Mont Revard. The day we went up with 
the boys will never be forgotten. The snow had fallen 
a few days before and four to six feet of snow lay 
upon the mountains. For two days the train had been 
unable to run and this was the first trip after the 
tracks had been cleared. 

The President of the railroad accompanied us. The 
sun was shining as on a summer day and no breath 
of wind stirred. It was one of the most perfect of 
days. When we reached the station the guide said 
it was impossible to reach the tower on the summit; 
the snow he said was too deep. "Nothing is im- 
possible," said one of the women Secretaries, and 
started out with the remark, "111 lead the way." And 
she did lead the way and in ten minutes a beaten path 
was made to the summit of the mountain. A French 



ii2 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

photographer took moving pictures of the company 
as they made their way over the trail, and took more 
pictures of the improvised snowball battle on the sum- 
mit. These pictures have since been seen in the mov- 
ing picture theaters of America, but they do not tell 
that the trip was planned and made possible by the 
men and women of the Y M C A. 

We sat in the snow in the soft glow of sunshine 
almost like summer and looked out over the precipice 
to the range of mountains beyond us. We were look- 
ing east and one of the number began to say: 

"It is good to see the old world, and travel up and 
down." 

And then, at the urgent request of those who knew 
the familiar words, with his back to the precipice, his 
face toward Mont Blanc, with a great group of Ameri- 
can soldiers and French civilians in front of him, 
Senator Leroy Percy of Mississippi quoted with one 
significant alteration, the verses which are perhaps the 
best which Henry Van Dyke has written, and which 
the soldiers in the American camps in France love to 
hear: 

"Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me! 
My heart is turning home again to God's countrie, 
To the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean 

bars, 
Where the air is full of sunshine and the flag is full of 

stars. 

It is good to see the old world, and travel up and down 
Among the famous countries and the cities of renown, 



ON LEAVE 113 

To admire the crumbly castles, and the monuments and 

kings ; 
But soon or late you have enough of antiquated things. 

Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air ; 
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair ; 
And it's sweet to loaf in Venice, and it's great to study 

Rome; 
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home. 

I like the Alpine fir-woods in green battalions drilled ; 
I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains 

filled; 
But oh to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a 

day 
In the friendly Western woodland where nature has 

her way! 

Oh! Europe is a fine place, yet something seems to 

lack, 
The past is too much with her, and the people looking 

back; 
But life is in the present, and the future must be free; 
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be. 

So it's home again, and home again, America for me! 
My heart is turning home again to God's countrie, 
To that blessed land of Room Enough, beyond the 

ocean bars, 
Where the air is full of sunshine and the flag is full of 

stars." 

No wonder the men are in love with Aix, and no 
wonder they sing the praises of the "Y." It is the "Y" 
working with the American Army that makes Aix 
and similar leave resorts possible. 



CHAPTER X 
THE CHURCH IN ARMS 

The boys of the 28th had just come back from their 
first real fight. Not all of them had come back. 
Some were lying out in the conquered territory and 
some had been hurried off to places of repair in ad- 
vanced hospital units. Those who did return, returned 
victorious over mud and fire and foe. 

The Chaplain was standing near one of the shelters 
resting a moment from his now multiplied duties, and 
thinking of the work of tomorrow — Sunday — when 
the regiment would gather around him for the first 
time after their baptism of fire together. 

One of the men, seeing him apparently unoccu- 
pied, stepped up and saluting him said, "Are you 
thinking what you will preach about tomorrow, sir?" 
The Chaplain had already selected his text and his 
subject, but the opportunity was too good to lose and 
if necessary, he could change both text and theme, so 
he said, "Yes, I was just wondering what the boys 
would like to hear, and I am not sure what I ought 
to preach." The lad's face lighted up. "I'll tell you 
what to preach about," he said. "I think it's the last 
verse in the Gospel of Matthew, 'Lo, I am with you 
always.' ' Then, after a pause, he continued, "I 
have known those words ever since I was a boy, but 
I never knew what they meant until these last few 

114 



THE CHURCH IN ARMS 115 

days. There were minutes when I never expected to 
come out alive, and the words kept coming back into 
my mind, and I knew I was not alone. After that, it 
didn't matter what happened." It is the mission of 
the Church of Christ to bear witness to the fact con- 
tained in the soldier's text, "Go . . . and lo, I am 
with you always." 

Whatever failure the American Church must con- 
fess regarding the fulfillment of her duty to the non- 
Christian peoples at home and abroad, certainly she is 
awake and alert to the obligation of service in rela- 
tion to the Great War. Neglectful of the needs of the 
Army and of the Navy in peace times, suddenly over 
night the Church has become partaker of the quicken- 
ing which now stirs the nation from sea to sea. The 
young men who manned her Sunday schools, her 
music, her organized life, slipped from their places 
and went forth to battle. They went forward, with 
thousands who had forsaken or neglected the Church, 
and over whom the Church seemed to exert no in- 
fluence. Yesterday they were unshepherded and lived 
their lives apart from the Church; today they are 
conscious of the fact that in the prayers offered in 
chapel and in cathedral they too have a share. 

The spirit of humility has fallen like a benediction 
upon the Church. Office bearers and long-time mem- 
bers of the Church have suddenly been surprised into 
the position of second place. The young men, who 
caused them anxious and prayerful concern, have 
taken the scepter out of their hands and moved up 
through the spirit of service and of sacrifice into the 



n6 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

first ranks. It is this fact that the Church has had 
to face. She is seeing her best and bravest young men 
go forth ready to die, for the children, the women, 
and old rejected men. It is the better, giving itself 
for the worse, and in the heart of the Church a new 
love and a new consecration have been born out of the 
very spirit of the Cross. In every church hangs a 
service flag filled with stars, and the boys in France 
and upon the sea and in the American cantonments 
know that they are loved and remembered and prayed 
for every day in the old home church. 

The cause for which they fight — what is it, but the 
cause of the Church itself ? The crusades of old were 
weak and worldly movements compared with this 
twentieth-century crusade. When I was in France, 
the French papers reported with evident satisfaction 
the words of Elihu Root in which he introduced the 
Archbishop of York to the people of America: "This 
is not a war for Servia, for Alsace-Lorraine, for 
Poland, not even for Belgium," he said. "It is a 
struggle for the overthrow or the maintenance of all 
the progress that the civilization of a century has 
made toward Christianity. It is a war to determine 
whether the world shall go back under the dominion of 
the power of darkness, back out of the light, back 
again to the days of despair and ignorance and slav- 
ery, or whether the good God who is just and com- 
passionate may still smile on a world where He is 
worshiped in spirit and in truth." 

In this war, the Church must follow the flag. 
Christianity must be militant. The Church is not 



THE CHURCH IN ARMS 117 

set for self-defense, but for the defense of the weak 
against the strong, and to keep the torch of truth 
aflame in dark and desolate days. 

The Church follows the flag in the person of the 
Chaplain. He is the official representative of the 
Church, and is part of the army organization. There 
is no group of men in the Army which has carried 
more responsibility and faced more difficulties than 
the chaplains. They have been tempted to turn their 
attention to anything and everything, and to make 
their primary duties secondary. They have acted as 
school teachers, librarians and athletic directors. 
They have been hidden away for days at a time 
censoring mail. They have served in the post ex- 
change and on court materials, and have featured mov- 
ing-picture entertainments. Their parish has doubled 
and yet they have been given no additional assistance 
and little equipment. They formerly served a regi- 
ment of 1,000 men, and they now continue to serve a 
regiment after it has been increased to 3,700. Through 
the efforts and interests of the Church, and the sym- 
pathetic cooperation of the Army, the intention now is 
to have one chaplain for every 1,200 men. 

Notwithstanding the rapid increase in the number 
of chaplains, the whole subject is full of perplexity. 
The chaplains are appointed as representatives of the 
denominations, in proportion to their numerical 
strength, and consequently are without organization 
or unified programme. To meet the needs of the 
situation a chaplain staff has been appointed consist- 
ing of three Protestants and two Catholics, with 



n8 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

Bishop Brent as Chairman. This committee will 
endeavor to relate and organize the chaplain force 
and to foster a spirit of unity and purpose among the 
official representatives of the Church in the Army. 

The splendid service of obscure chaplains will mul- 
tiply the war literature of the world and feed the 
faith of the church for centuries. At Passchendaele a 
Canadian officer said, "Without the Chaplain it would 
be impossible to keep the morale of the men." When- 
ever there is need and danger, there you find the 
padre of the camp. "Our Chaplain," says a private 
of the First Royal Irish Rifles, "is always in the 
trenches with the regiment. He has faced death forty 
times since we came out. I have seen him in the 
front trenches hearing confessions, with bullets in 
showers like hailstones pasing overhead. That is what 
makes soldiers fight well and die calm. When they 
have loads off their consciences, their minds are easy, 
and they don't fear death." 

Writing from the battle-field in France in the early 
days of the war, a British soldier gives a revealing 
picture of the chaplain's opportunity: 

"A padre turned up yesterday, and at night (it was 
not safe to begin earlier) we held a service which a 
great number of our men attended, and afterwards 
there was a large attendance at Holy Communion. It 
was a strange sight. It was in a wood, in black dark- 
ness save for two candles on a packing-case which 
served as an altar ; the chalice was a tin mug ; the 
soldiers, grimed with battle, each with his rifle, knelt 
in a circle round the light. There must have been 
such scenes in very early Christian days." 



THE CHURCH IN ARMS 119 

One Saturday night, I found myself among the 
ruins of a French town, on the Lorraine front. The 
town had been shot to pieces in the early days of the 
war, and the day I arrived a shell had exploded in 
what formerly was the main street of the village, kill- 
ing five mules and wounding a soldier who was on 
guard. From this town the trench system began and 
every now and then the sky was lighted up with star 
shells. I went into the cellar where the Y M C A had 
its headquarters and where in the pale flickering 
candle-light, the boys obtained tobacco, chocolate, 
matches, and a little fellowship. I pushed on through 
the dark passage-way into the rear cellar. A man 
was sitting alone, looking into the flame of the little 
wood fire which was the only light in that dark and 
dismal dwelling. As I entered he looked up, and the 
fire lighted both our faces. "Great Scott," he said, 
"how did you get out here?" I had known him in 
other days and had seen him when comfort and repu- 
tation were his, but I had never seen him so satisfied 
nor so sure of his calling, as he was under the sound 
of American guns in France. "This is the real thing," 
he said, and carried me away to show me the im- 
provised chapel where, in the morning, he and his men 
would meet God face to face. 

In France, the churches of America function not 
only through the chaplains, but through the Y M C A. 
When asked as to the relation of the "Y" to the 
Church, Gipsy Smith said, "A communication 
trench." That explanation, however, is both inade- 
quate and misleading for the "Y" and the Church are 



i2o PORT TO LISTENING POST 

and ought to be one. They are one in their personnel 
and one in their purpose. 

Denominations have laid aside their differences and 
have concentrated upon the task of helping our men 
and they find the "Y" the channel through which that 
service can be rendered most efficiently. Never before 
in history could Christians more truly sing, 

"We are not divided, 
All one body we." 

The Red Triangle is the sign not only of the 

Y M C A, but of the churches of America, and clergy- 
men from all denominations, bishops and rectors, 
pastors and professors, presidents and preachers, 
elders and deacons, Sunday school teachers and 

Y M C A Secretaries, all in uniform, and all without 
rank distinction, are serving in the huts across the 
sea. 

The "Y" took E. C. Carter from India, F. B. Shipp 
from America, and D. A. Davis from Turkey, and 
placed in their hands this sacred trust. Trained to 
think in international terms, they have won the con- 
fidence of the American and Allied Armies, and of 
their leadership General Pershing has expressed his 
warmest approval. 

To every man responsible for the religious work in 
the camp, Dr. Robert Freeman, the eloquent poet- 
preacher of California and head of the Religious Work 
Department, has issued the following instructions: 

"The big worth of the Y M C A lies in the Secre- 




Executive Secretaries Overseas- 
E. C. Carter and F. B. Shipp 



THE CHURCH IN ARMS 121 

tary himself. His service, his thoughtfulness, his un- 
selfishness, far outweigh the supplies of the canteen or 
the conveniences of the hut. There is no substitute for 
his simple brotherly kindness, nor sales, nor shows, nor 
sermons. 'It is the mightiest kind of preaching. 

Nevertheless, we want to make sales and give shows 
and deliver sermons, and we need far-sighted planning 
that these may accomplish the greatest measure of 
good. We know that religion is not in organization, 
but we know, too, that the reach of religion can be 
extended and its grip strengthened by methods of or- 
ganization. 

Therefore, we propose the following concrete 
methods born of the experience of a number of our 
fellow-workers : 

I. Religious Services 

There shall be three regular services a week in each 
hut. 

1. Sunday morning: Whenever possible have the 
Chaplain conduct a service. A goodly percentage of 
our soldiers are of the Roman Catholic faith, and it 
is desirable that we take pains to plan for such reli- 
gious exercises as are familiar to them. If the Chap- 
lain be a Roman Catholic, hold also a Protestant 
service, at least a Bible class. 

2. Sunday evening: Have a 'sing' using wholly, or at 
least leading up to some favorite hymns, and being 
followed as frequently as possible with an address. 
Exchange between hut Secretaries will provide a good 
many speakers; in some sections addresses by army 
medical officers, promoting the clean life, fit in, too. 

3. Midzveek service: Plan a regular service of a 
devotional character for Wednesday or Thursday eve- 
nings, whichever suits best. Your own personal read- 



122 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

ing will doubtless give you a few minutes' remarks, 
if you do not have another speaker; the singing will 
cheer the men up; and a prayer, whether read or 
impromptu, will wash the souls of your men. 

II. Bible Classes 

1. Have a Bible class in every company, squadron, 
and battery, led by one of the men, and meeting on 
week nights. That man may be found generally 
through the top sergeant. Later, when you are plenti- 
fully supplied with gospels, you could make a man- 
to-man visitation of your soldier family, offering a 
gospel to every man who wanted it without any urging 
on your part; at the same time telling him that if, 
when he had finished, he desired the whole Testament, 
he should report to you. This would offer you your 
best chance for personal work and for enlistments 
for your Bible classes. 

2. Hold a normal class of all your leaders, instruct- 
ing them on the next lesson. Nine o'clock Sunday 
morning is a good time. 

3. Your Sunday morning Protestant service might 
very well take the form of a talk by you on the lesson 
studied the preceding week. The men will be in- 
terested and full of questions. Competition between 
companies in the matter of attendance might be 
fostered. 

III. Discussion Groups 

In some of our huts, Sunday afternoon discussion 
groups using some such text-book as "The Social Prin- 
ciples of Jesus," by Rauschenbusch, are making a go. 

IV. Free Literature 
There ought to be always in sight some pamphlets 



THE CHURCH IN ARMS 123 

and booklets under a sign: 'Help yourself/ Many of 
these will disappear when you are not looking. They 
may be on a counter or in a rack. I know we have not 
much of this thus far, but perhaps 'Friend or Enemy' 
has reached you, and other such. If not, I want you 
to know what we plan as soon as the material is in 
hand. 

Now this seems like a great deal, I know, for you 
feel all the time that you are swamped with little 
material tasks that take all your time and leave you 
wearied and discouraged. For that very reason, if 
for no other, you must make such plans as the above. 
Religious instruction will find no place unless you 
plan for it. Let us therefore, unostentatiously but 
constantly and systematically seek to turn men's 
thoughts to the highest things." 

More clergymen than trained Y M C A Secre- 
taries are serving in France today. They have gone 
forth from churches, theological seminaries, and col- 
leges, to serve the Association, and are the pledge of 
the unity and spirit which exists in the American 
churches. The Church has seized this opportunity for 
service, and has contributed through the channel of 
the Y M C A clergymen, laymen, money, and leader- 
ship, in hitherto undreamed-of proportions. In this 
war the entire Church is in arms. 

After a Sunday evening service, where the boys to 
the number of 500 were gathered, a Jewish lad from 
Pittsburgh put his arm over the preacher's shoulder 
and said, "Tell the Y. M. H. A. back home to give all 
its money to the Y M C A, for it has made me feel 
at home here, and it has no respect for any religion." 



124 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

We understand the fine sentiment behind his words. 
The Y M C A had respected his faith, and through 
the doors of the hut he had entered into the atmosphere 
of home. 

Church union is in France an accomplished fact. 
Frequently the Communion is served by ministers of 
all denominations assisting. In the service on Sunday 
and week-night, Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew sit 
upon the same benches. On Good Friday a priest of 
the Roman Catholic faith, together with a Baptist 
clergyman, explained the "Stations of the Cross." In 
one case a Y M C A clergyman acted as interpreter at 
the last sacrament administered by a French priest to 
a dying American soldier. We have long prayed for 
unity. Let us pause for a moment to give thanks. 

It takes virile and versatile men to do front line 
work in France, and it is surprising how many clergy- 
men are promoted to that service. 

When our first division moved from the eastern 
front into the line of battle to help stem the German 
advance, the entire service of the Y M C A had to be 
transplanted. Fourteen trucks, loaded in the night 
with tents, equipment, and canteen supplies, moved 
out along the road at daybreak. Two young clergy- 
men from Western Pennsylvania headed the party, 
and when night fell, those fourteen trucks drew up 
at the destination where the troops were disembarking 
near the French front, and were greeted by the familiar 
and hearty welcome. "Here comes the old 'Y.' " That 
is part of the reward that comes from following the 
flag. 



THE CHURCH IN ARMS 125 

A well-known clergyman from the West, who was 
known among the boys as "Angel-Face" because of 
his pleasing ways and cheery smile, was assigned to 
manual labor at a base camp. His first task was road- 
making. He drove a truck loaded with broken stone 
from the quarry near by, to the highway that needed 
some quick repair work. For some days he labored 
and his hands became bruised and calloused. His 
second task was building a hut and putting the canteen 
in shape for efficient service. One morning he was 
commissioned to Paris for supplies, and while there 
overheard three American chauffeurs who were stand- 
ing near the entrance at headquarters, talking. One 

of them said, "It makes me sick to see these d d 

preachers loafing around here doing nothing." "Angel- 
Face" went on into the building to cool off, but in- 
stead of becoming cooler he got hotter, and coming 
to where the men were still talking, he faced his man. 

"I heard what you said just now about those d d 

preachers and I want you to understand that I'm one 
of them. Look at my hands. They are hard as iron, 
and unless you take back your dirty words, I'll knock 
you down." The man hedged and hesitated, but 
"Angel Face's" iron fist was near his head, and another 
critic of the clergy was silenced. "I didn't mean any- 
thing, Mister," said the chauffeur. "Well, why don't 
you say what you mean?" said "Angel Face" and 
walked away. Down near the front he is no longer 
called "Angel Face"; his pals call him "Gyp the 
Blood." 

Two of our soldier boys passing through Paris were 



126 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

seeing the city. The ever-alert "guide" had discovered 
them and had engaged himself to show the soldiers 
the sights of Paris. At an opportune moment a clergy- 
man wearing the Y M C A uniform passed and took 
in the situation at a glance. "Where are you taking 
the boys?" he quietly asked the guide. "None of your 
business," came the retort. "Well, we'll see if it's 
not my business," said the Clerical Secretary. "I have 
a free hour now and I'll go along." That proposition 
did not suit the "guide," for he knew the insignia of 
the Red Triangle. He grew ugly and closed in to fight, 
but before he knew what had happened he found him- 
self lying on his back. When he arose he took to his 
heels and disappeared round the corner. The next 
day those two boys visited their new-found friend at 
headquarters, and left with him a little package. When 
the clergyman opened it he found a little American 
flag with a note thanking him, not for protection — 
they could take care of themselves — but for the cour- 
age and the reality of his friendship. 

There is scarcely a town in America that has not 
released one or more of its pastors for war work serv- 
ice under the direction of the Y M C A. Half the 
force that mans the British huts comes from the ranks 
of the clergy, and American churches will make will- 
ing sacrifices that the Army and the Navy may be 
ministered to in all good things. From city and rural 
churches, from Eastern states and from needy West- 
ern communities, men trained for spiritual ministry 
are serving in prominent and obscure places overseas. 
Concerning the service of one of these men, whom the 



THE CHURCH IN ARMS 127 

Church at home has sent to the men in France, Ralph 
W. Harbison of the War Work Council, who accom- 
panied me to France, writes : 

"After a supper of chocolate, war bread, and canned 
beef, the six of us Secretaries were ordered to the 
cellar of the *Y,' together with fifty soldiers who hap- 
pened to be in the old shell-torn building, as the 
Boche were beginning again to shell the town. We 
took candles, a big basket full of canteen supplies to 
last us in case we should have to be dug out later, 
overcoats, and blankets. We fitted our gas masks on, 
to be sure they were working well, and then settled 
down, or tried to, in the dungeon, and here I saw the 
first real service of the chief 'Y' man, the Rev. George 
Clarke, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at La 
Grange, Oregon — a real man among men, who had 
not left his post for fourteen days. He entered the 
cave last and noticing that the soldiers were very quiet 
and perhaps a bit anxious, he said cheerily, 'Well, 
boys, let's sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," ' 
and then he read them some good poems and talked 
to them. We expected to have to stay all night but 
in an hour a sentry called 'all out' and out we gladly 
went. The rest of the evening we spent upstairs in 
one of the reasonably whole rooms with piano and 
songs and stories and the ever-present and wonderful 
canteen. An ex-New York motorcycle policeman, who 
holds the world's hurdle record, led the singing and 
told a funny story of his arrest of three Brooklyn boys 
on Brooklyn Bridge for some minor offense. The 
three boys mentioned were right there in the group 
and laughingly confirmed it all." 

One wonders whether the soldier or the minister, or 
the Church at home that makes such ministry possible, 



128 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

receives the greatest blessing. Certainly the men who 
thus serve will, when the war is ended, be trained 
and prepared for a service which the new world will 
sorely need. 

Much is being written today about the Church of the 
future. Theorists are at work, denouncing former 
creeds by which men lived and died and formulating 
new creeds for tomorrow. The creed of tomorrow 
will not be made by what Kipling calls "The Per- 
severance Doubters and the Present Comfort Shirks." 
It is being fashioned now in the fire and it is being 
lived by those who find themselves in at the battle 
front. The Civil War made for division in theology, 
and for denominational Christianity. This war has 
already made for religious reality and Christian unity. 
The Spirit of God is moving on the face of humanity 
and where the Spirit of God is, there are liberty, 
equality, and fraternity. 

I found no tendency on the part of the men of the 
American Army in France to criticize the Church. In 
civilian and military life, the door of opportunity 
stands open and if the Church fails now to enter and 
possess her heritage, she will have missed the greatest 
opportunity in history. 

Those who have heard in Paris the shriek of the 
siren in the night, telling them that the death-dealing 
bombs of the enemy are overhead, will never forget 
that weird sound. It sends soldiers and sailors, officers 
and men, women and children, in utter helplessness in 
search of safety. It stops trains and railways, and 
the doors of hotels and shops are closed, while silence 



THE CHURCH IN ARMS 129 

broken by the explosion of bombs reigns over the city. 
An hour, two hours, three hours, go by, and then in 
the streets one hears the glad clarion notes of the 
recall. The trumpeter with the silver trumpet, borne 
through the streets in automobile or in fire engine, 
sounds those silver notes that thrill with the triumph 
of victory, and from their shelters men and women 
come forth to breathe the breath of full life again. 

The Church for years past has listened to the call 
of the siren. Already another note is heard in the 
literature and legislation of the world. It is the note 
that sounds the recall. It is the trumpet of God calling 
men forth to full life to the celebration of the triumph 
of Truth, to the recognition of the supremacy of the 
spirit. 



CHAPTER XI 
SANS CAMOUFLAGE 

Camouflage is a war word. Yesterday it was un- 
known, today it is one of the commonest words in 
the world. It speaks of war. It suggests the kiss 
that betrays, the olive branch that is a sword, the 
treaty that is a scrap of paper. It transforms a bat- 
tery into a grove of trees, an ammunition dump into 
a field of grain, a moving train into a herd of cattle in 
the meadow. Camouflage enables things to be other 
than they seem. 

There is a tendency now to use the word in relation 
to religion. I suppose it can be so used. The word 
is just French for hypocrisy. It may be possible to 
relate the word to religion in times of peace, but it is 
increasingly difficult and dangerous to do so in a world 
at war. There is no camouflage about religion at the 
front. The one thing that has not succeeded with the 
men of the Army is a camouflaged religion. The 
Army demands reality. Soldiers and sailors abhor 
hypocrisy. They surrender to sincerity. 

One dark moonless night I drove out from the 
Y M C A headquarters in a Ford truck to the front 
line. The guns were speaking and the sky was lumi- 
nous with shell fire. We traveled along the registered 
highway over roads screened on both sides and over- 
head. We passed soldiers marching to the front, and 

130 



SANS CAMOUFLAGE I3I 

army trucks loaded with ammunition creeping slowly 
towards the battle-line. The road was rough from 
much wear and from frequent shell explosions and 
ran into the wooded hills of the Lorraine front, where 
the trees had been stripped by shrapnel and the hill- 
sides gutted with shell holes. One could count hun- 
dreds of shell holes to the acre. 

Leaving the highway, we followed a narrow trail 
through the hills where sentries stood beside abri- 
shelters until we had lost all reckoning as to direction 
and distance. The road ended in a "Y" dugout, 
where the soldiers who had just returned from the 
trenches were waiting the coming of canteen supplies. 
The men had been in the fire and had lost some of 
their pals in the barrage. 

Late in the night we walked further into the mystery 
of the hillside and discovered hidden in the trees a 
little rustic chapel, faith's abri-shelter, a shrine of the 
soul, where in that lonely and desolate land men dis- 
covered themselves in the light of the eternal. The 
boys with their own hands had built it out of the trees 
of the woods and there it stood — an expression of 
undying faith and of religion which always speaks the 
last word of life. 

The nearer one gets to the front line trenches the 
nearer one gets to God. "Writing in a tragic hour a 
solemn page of history, we resolved that it should be 
sincere and glorious." Thus wrote Cardinal Mercier 
in the dark days of Belgium's martyrdom. When men 
come face to face with things inscrutable they are not 
far from making the great discovery. God is not far 



I 3 2 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

off. Wherever there is helplessness, when men can- 
not by logic understand and explain, they "touch God's 
right hand in the darkness/' "Clouds and darkness 
are round about Him, righteousness and judgment 
are the habitation of His throne." When the temple 
is filled with smoke the prophet discovers God. It is 
the history of all the ages. At the end of the path, 
when human helpers fail, men discover God. It was 
in the forests of France that the faith of the Hugue- 
nots was born. It was on the mist-covered hills of 
Scotland that the Covenanters' creed was fashioned. 
It was in the fire of affliction that America was reborn, 
and out of the furnace of fire our men are climbing 
the great world altar stairs that slope through dark- 
ness up to God. 

The Serbian Ambassador to France told us that 
when the remnants of the Serbian Army were taken 
by the Allies across to the island of Corfu in the 
Adriatic, all of their priests had been lost or slain, and 
a peasant school teacher among them composed for 
them this prayer to represent the faith and unconquer- 
able spirit of the Serbian Army and people. 

"O, Lord God, our Father and our Creator, God of 
Justice, God of Truth, God of Pity, hear our prayer, 
the prayer of the whole Serbian people, crucified and 
agonized. 

From a country where we are strangers, where we 
wait with longing, our wives and our children, far, 
far, from our Serbian motherland, kneeling and with 
tears, we implore Thee, Lord. 

By the might of Thy hand stay up, Almighty 



SANS CAMOUFLAGE 133 

Creator, the throne of our King, keep and guard and 
preserve the Serbian Army, the Serbian people, our 
little ones, and our youth who are in bondage and in 
distress. 

For them and for us, we pray Thee, graft in our 
hearts the spirit of wisdom and of faithfulness and of 
endurance, that we may bear ourselves like men, and, 
that even out of these untold wrongs and these bitter- 
est trials, we may still turn our hearts to Thee, our 
God. 

For Thou, O God, art the source of all power and 
might. Hearken then to our prayers ; hear the cry of 
our distress, and bring ere long our bark of life out 
of danger and to the haven of rest from suffering. 

And to Thee, be the glory throughout all ages now 
and forever more, Amen and Amen." 

Even if one has never seen the battle front, he 
knows that God has come nigh to men in the fighting 
line. He has read of it, even if he has not seen it. 
He has read of Private Peat's vision of Calvary as 
he lay out in the mist and the shadows among the 
dead and the dying. He has read of it in the poetry 
of Rupert Brooke, whose verses before the war awoke 
no real response, but whose war sonnets are winged 
with immortality. But at the battle front he is sure 
of it. 

One dark night in the Lorraine sector, after we 
had gone as far as we could towards the front, we 
came to a destroyed and ruined village. At the edge 
of the village the trench system began that led out 
to "No Man's Land." The village was in ruins. The 
little stone church had been totally destroyed. The 



134 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

tombstones in the cemetery were shattered and muti- 
lated. While we were out in the trenches shells from 
German guns came shrieking over our heads and ex- 
ploded among the ruins behind us. American soldiers 
were quartered there in cellars and in what was left 
of the houses. Underground we found a little impro- 
vised chapel. The Chaplain lived there with his men 
and had gathered from the ruined church the symbols 
of worship which had escaped destruction. Nothing 
was perfect. Everything had been mutilated. Statues 
of Christ without arms or head were there. Mutilated 
images of the Virgin were there. Leading down from 
that cellar chapel was a cave in which twenty Ameri- 
can soldiers were sleeping. It was a sight never to be 
forgotten — the sleeping soldiers and the improvised 
chapel amid the ruin and desolation wrought by the 
Hun. In the danger and in the dark the men some- 
how felt that God was near. 

In the ruined buildings the Secretaries of the 
Y M C A carry on their ministry of help and hope, 
and there at night these same Secretaries with their 
packs upon their backs go through the communicat- 
ing trenches into the front line and out to the distant 
listening posts, serving the men. In one night one 
of these men going from place to place held ten serv- 
ices in the trenches, reading the gospel message by a 
flickering candle light, and speaking a word of faith 
and love. The evidence of religious response is found 
everywhere. 

On the night of Good Friday the men had gathered 
in one of the huts. It was behind the lines and the 



SANS CAMOUFLAGE 135 

sound of the guns was constant. The Chaplains and 
the Y M C A men, the Commanding Officer of the 
camp and his staff, two or three Y M C A women, a 
French officer, a few French soldiers in blue, and two 
or three hundred of our American boys were ready 
to receive and welcome the religious message. That 
dark hut and the booming of the guns will always live 
in our memory. But most significant of all is the 
memory of the hush that fell upon the men as we read 
to them the story of the crucifixion, of the greatest 
tragedy in human history, where faith and love were 
crowned. The lesson required no comment. 

Along the river Marne, during a rest interval when 
orders had been received that the camp was to be 
moved and then countermanded, the Y M C A Secre- 
tary, who was a lay-evangelist, received permission 
from the Colonel and from the Catholic Chaplain to 
conduct in the camp a series of week-night religious 
services. These services were continued for ten nights 
with unabated interest, and before they closed sixty 
men had openly confessed Christ, and sixteen had been 
baptized in the river Marne by the Chaplain from a 
neighboring camp. 

In an Australian rest camp, at a time when several 
companies of soldiers were ordered back to the front, 
a large religious service was held, conducted by the 
Church of England Chaplain and a clergyman from 
one of the Australian churches. They talked to the 
men in the most serious and direct manner, using as 
their text the command given to Joshua when he was 
about to undertake his very dangerous campaign: 



136 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

"Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of 
good courage ; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed : 
for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou 
goest." 

After the service the Holy Communion was admin- 
istered, and then the men went out, prepared for the 
order to advance. 

One may say that it is the sense of fear that leads 
men to serious thought. Perhaps. Yet these are not 
the men to charge with fear. It ill becomes us to 
make such a charge against the men who are going 
forth to make the supreme sacrifice. It is truer per- 
haps to say that the sense of mystery, the sense of 
human helplessness, the creation of a new scale of 
values, has much to do with it. Old things have 
passed away. The things that once held the heart — 
money, pleasure, ambition — have vanished away, and 
the things that abide — faith, hope, and love — these 
remain. 

Perhaps it is true that the soldier is superstitious. 
He sees crosses and statues unharmed in the midst 
of desolation, and he thinks there must be a reason. 
Certain it is that the sacraments have a strange fasci- 
nation for the men and have obtained new significance 
out on the battle front. It is true also that the horror 
of the great wickedness that has broken out in the 
world has challenged the thought of the Army. Be- 
hind the military movements some awful thing has 
motived men. War is full of agonizing brutality. It 
is easy for folks in the safe security of their homes 
five thousand miles from the firing line to glorify 



SANS CAMOUFLAGE 137 

war. The soldier who faces the fire, faces neither 
glamor nor glory. He faces mud and noise, cruelty 
and confusion. He faces the reversal of Christianity. 
He faces the deceitfulness and wickedness of men. 
He comes again to believe in hell because he believes 
in justice, and he understands now as never before 
that where there is iniquity and moral evil there can 
be no peace. He sees a place for the words of Jesus, 
"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye 
escape the damnation of hell ?" 

A recent writer, who ten years ago was a pro- 
nounced evolutionist in the realm of religion, whose 
vocabulary was freighted with words that spoke of 
development, immaturity, progress, imperfection, re- 
cently said: 

"Sin is not immaturity. There is a difference be- 
tween a green apple and a worm-eaten apple. Growth 
will ripen the green apple, but growth will only add 
to the size and the appetite of the worm. There is 
a difference between the crudities and carelessness and 
mischiefs of a boy and the criminality of a Bill Sykes 
or an Iago. Sin is not good in the making. A process 
of making has been going on in Germany for the 
last half century, and never will it restore the Ger- 
many of Kant and Hegel, of Goethe and Schiller, of 
Luther and Melanchthon. Sin is positive, aggressive, 
destructive, and it is to be confronted with weapons 
that destroy and with a wrath resolute to destroy." 

The only fact that seems to satisfy is the fact of 
Christ. These men have no theological theory, but 
in Christ they see evil conquered and purity upon the 
cross triumphant. In Him they see all that is lovely 



138 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

and purest in human life taken by wicked hands and 
put to death in the most cruel fashion that the world 
has ever seen. And they have seen him dying, agoniz- 
ing, yet unafraid, unconquered and unconquerable. 

During the South African war a Boer marksman 
shot an Irish soldier near the Tugela river. The South 
African immediately set about to strip the soldier of 
his clothes. He took off his overcoat, his belt, and 
his shirt, and then saw, lying next the heart that was 
still, a cross. He stood for awhile and gazed at it. 
The great gulf of war yawned between him and that 
Irish Catholic. It was only for a moment, but that 
yawning chasm was bridged. He covered the naked 
body with the overcoat that he had intended to take, 
and walked away. He was in the presence of reality 
and was bound by a subtle sympathy that he could 
not explain. These are days when Christ comes into 
his own. 

The great note in the teaching of the Church in the 
past was safety. Personal safety was the goal of 
much religious effort. It is a true note in the teaching 
of Christianity. No man can be of service until he, 
himself, has his feet on the rock, and personal salva- 
tion is written deep into the teaching of Jesus. It is 
embedded in the hymnology of the ages. "Jesus, Lover 
of My Soul," "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me," "Nearer, 
My God, to Thee," strike true and tender chords. The 
General who said, "I need no preparation for retreat, 
I will advance," was beaten. Security belongs to 
things fundamental, but we may think too much of 
security. We may allow our religion to find a per- 



SANS CAMOUFLAGE 139 

sonal rather than a social goal. These men in the 
Army are not drawn by a gospel of security. They 
have thrown security to the wind. They are facing the 
fire and are prepared for danger and death. 

Personal safety has no charm. The Croix de Guerre 
comes only when safety and security are abandoned. 
The great word is service. Negative things have 
passed away and behold, things have become positive. 
The restrictions of home and church and comrades 
have disappeared and men live an independent life. 
Religion is no longer a matter of Sunday observance, 
and church-going, and abstinence from card-playing. 
All the frills and fashions of conventional religion 
have gone, and the things of the spirit have become 
of themselves the real and determining things of life. 
The spirit of Pharisaism, all too intimately related 
to conventional religion, is abhorred and the things 
men do determine character. Thus it is that the su- 
preme words of the Gospel become charged with new 
meaning. Calvary, Gethsemane, and the Cross are 
full of revealing truth and interpretative of the agony 
of the battle-ground. Humanity for its own sake be- 
comes sacred, and brotherhood is no longer a dream, 
but a benediction. The motto on the picture of Joan 
of Arc that hangs in her own little church at Dom- 
remy, near where many American soldiers are billeted, 
"Vitam pro fide dedit" is the motto of modern mili- 
tant Christianity. We too are called upon to give 
our lives for our faith. 

I stood one day in the city of Verdun, that silent 
city of the dead, with its shattered walls and broken 



140 PORT TO LISTENING POST 

buildings, where more of humanity sleeps beneath its 
ruins than has been in its streets since the siege ; that 
city of 20,000 inhabitants, which burned for two 
weeks, but which defied the might of the Crown 
Prince and buried him in obscurity. We wandered 
through its desolate and silent streets, with shrapnel 
at our feet, the shops showing signs of having been 
vacated suddenly, the trees shattered and torn by 
shells. Instinctively we wandered into the cathedral, 
that had stood on that same spot since the eleventh 
century. Everything was gone; the roof had been 
torn open, the windows shattered, the pillars broken 
by shell and bomb. It was a scene of desolation and 
of disaster. Its priests had disappeared, and only a 
soldier in blue kept sentry duty over the sacred ruins. 
The day before a shell had come crashing through 
what was left of the roof and had embedded itself in 
the marble floor. Everything was confusion and deso- 
lation, and yet one thing remained. The high altar 
was untouched. The high altar, resting on four spiral 
porphyry pillars, was still unscathed. 

One does not need to be superstitious to see in that 
altar of sacrifice, standing in the midst of ruin and 
desolation unharmed and untouched, a symbol of 
faith, of imperishable reality, of the things that abide. 
Amid the ruin, devastation, and destruction, the shat- 
tering of purposes and plans, the thing that cannot be 
shaken remains. 



